SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

WINTER, 2017

VOLUME FOUR NUMBER ONE

JILL SCOTT

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

DAVID MURRAY
(February 25--March 3)

OLIVER LAKE
(March 4–10)

GERALD WILSON
(March 11-17)

DON BYRON
(March 18-24)

KENNY GARRETT
(March 25-31)

COLEMAN HAWKINS
(April 1-7)

ELMORE JAMES
(April 8-14)

WES MONTGOMERY
(April 15-21)

FELA KUTI
(April 22-28)

OLIVER NELSON
(April 29-May 5)

SON HOUSE
(May 6-12)

JOHN LEE HOOKER
(May 13-19)

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/gerald-wilson-mn0000946171/biography

Gerald Wilson
(1918-2014)
Artist Biography by Richard S. Ginell

From time to time, Gerald Wilson seemed like one of Los Angeles' better-kept secrets, an unusually skillful, imaginative, and charismatic bandleader who hadn't received his due outside the West Coast. His arrangements were distinctive, often complex voicings and harmonies, rooted in swing and bop, yet always forward-looking and energetic in tone. He liked to play around with structures, which contributed to the restless quality in much of his music, and being a bullfight aficionado, he was one of the first arrangers to make use of Spanish influences. He was consistently able to attract top-rank musicians to his bands, who played with immaculate precision and brio for the flamboyantly gesticulating maestro.

Upon moving from Memphis to Detroit with his family in 1932, Wilson studied music in high school and played with the Plantation Music Orchestra before undergoing the formative experience of his life, working with the Jimmie Lunceford band from 1939 to 1942. Replacing Sy Oliver as arranger, conductor, and trumpet soloist, Wilson learned his craft in the Lunceford band, after which he took off for Los Angeles to play with the bands of Les Hite, Benny Carter, and Willie Smith. Wilson organized his first big band in 1944, which sported an intriguing blend of swing and bop and featured musicians like Melba Liston and Snooky Young. But it only lasted three years, and after playing for Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947 and 1948, Wilson quit the music business for a while to try his hand in the grocery trade. After a tentative return as a bandleader in 1952, it took a while for him to gradually ease his way back into jazz full-time; he even made appearances as a TV actor.

In 1961, after experimenting with a workshop band for four years, Wilson formed a new orchestra that made a string of successful albums for the Pacific Jazz label throughout the '60s, featuring soloists like Harold Land, Teddy Edwards, Bud Shank, Jack Wilson, and Joe Pass. One tune that he wrote for the Moment of Truth album, "Viva Tirado" (later reprised on Live and Swinging) became a surprise hit single for the Latin rock group El Chicano in 1970. He scored films and TV programs, worked as an arranger for recordings by singers such as Al Hibbler, Bobby Darin, and Johnny Hartman, contributed arrangements to the Duke Ellington band, and wrote music for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also started a series of hugely entertaining and informative classes in jazz history at California State University, Northridge (then San Fernando Valley State College) in 1970, moving them to UCLA in 1992, and had his own radio program on L.A.'s KBCA-FM from 1969 to 1976.

Wilson continued to lead big bands off and on through the '80s and '90s, as well as running the orchestra for Redd Foxx's NBC shows and serving as one of the Los Angeles jazz scene's more revered elder statesmen. In 1995, he commemorated more than half a century as a leader by releasing State Street Sweet, a vigorous tribute to the durability of his work, and scoring a solid hit at the Playboy Jazz Festival. In 1996, Wilson's life's work was archived by the Library of Congress, and in 1997 he completed Theme for Monterey, a piece commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival. In 2003 he recorded New York, New Sound, his debut for Mack Avenue Records, which went on receive a Grammy nomination in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble category. Several albums for Mack Avenue followed with In My Time in 2005, Monterey Moods in 2007, and Detroit in 2009. In 2011, Wilson released his fifth Mack Avenue album, the classical-themed Legacy. However, his health began to decline with his advancing years, and, after contracting pneumonia, Gerald Wilson died at his Los Angeles home in September 2014 at age 96.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-gerald-wilson-20140909-story.html

Gerald Wilson dies at 96; multifaceted jazz musician
by Don Heckman
Special to the Los Angeles Times
September 8, 2014

In a lifetime that spanned a substantial portion of the history of jazz, Gerald Wilson’s combination of articulate composition skills with a far-reaching creative vision carried him successfully through each of the music’s successive new evolutions. (GAB Archive / Redferns)

Gerald Wilson, a bandleader, trumpeter, composer, arranger and educator whose multifaceted career reached from the swing era of the 1930s to the diverse jazz sounds of the 21st century, has died. He was 96.

Wilson, who had been in declining health, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles, two weeks after contracting pneumonia, said his son, jazz guitarist Anthony Wilson.

In a lifetime that spanned a substantial portion of the history of jazz, Wilson's combination of articulate composition skills with a far-reaching creative vision carried him successfully through each of the music's successive new evolutions.

He led his own Gerald Wilson Orchestras — initially for a few years in the mid-1940s, then intermittently in every succeeding decade — recording with stellar assemblages of players, continuing to perform live, well after big jazz bands had been largely eclipsed by small jazz groups and the ascendancy of rock music.

Seeing and hearing Wilson lead his ensembles — especially in his later years — was a memorable experience for jazz fans. Garbed in well tailored suits, his long white hair flowing, Wilson shaped the music with dynamic movements and the elegant grace of a modern dancer.

Asked about his unique style of conducting by Terry Gross on the NPR show "Fresh Air" in 2006, he replied: It's "different from any style you've ever seen before. I move. I choreograph the music as I conduct. You see, I point it out, everything you're to listen to."

That approach to conducting, combined with the dynamic quality of his music, had a significant impact on the players in his ensembles.

"There's no way you can sit in Gerald's band and sit on the back of your chair," bandleader/arranger John Clayton told the Detroit Free Press. "He handles the orchestra in a very wise and experienced craftsman sort of way. The combination of the heart and the craft is in perfect balance."

Wilson's mastery of the rich potential in big jazz band instrumentation was evident from the beginning. Although he was not pleased with his first arrangement — a version of the standard "Sometimes I'm Happy" written in 1939, when he was playing trumpet in the Jimmie Lunceford band — he was encouraged by Lunceford and his fellow players to write more. "Hi Spook," his first original composition for big band, followed and was quickly added to the Lunceford repertoire. Soon after, Wilson wrote a brightly swinging number titled "Yard Dog Mazurka" — a popular piece that eventually became the inspiration for the Stan Kenton hit "Intermission Riff." It was the beginning of an imaginative flow of music that would continue well into the 21st century.

Always an adventurous composer, Wilson's big band music often had a personal touch, aimed at displaying the talents of a specific player, or inspired by many of his family members. After marrying his Mexican American wife, Josefina Villasenor Wilson, he was drawn to music possessing Spanish/Mexican qualities. His "Viva Tirado," dedicated to bullfighter Jose Ramon Tirado, became a hit for the Latin rock group El Chicano and was one of several compositions celebrating the achievements of stars of the bullring.

"His pieces are all extended, with long solos and long backgrounds," musician/jazz historian Loren Schoenberg told the New York Times in 1988. "They're almost hypnotic. Most are seven to 10 minutes long. Only a master can keep the interest going that long, and he does."

In addition to his compositions, Wilson was an arranger with the ability to craft songs to the styles of individual performers, as well as the musical characteristics of other orchestras. It was a skill that kept him busy during the periods when he was not concentrating on leading his own groups.

"I may have done more numbers and orchestrations than any other black jazz artist in the world," he told the Los Angeles Sentinel. "I did 60-something for Ray Charles. I did his first and second country-western album. I wrote a lot of music for Count Basie, eight numbers for his first Carnegie Hall concert," he said.

He also provided arrangements and compositions for such major jazz artists as Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson and others, as well as — from various genres — Bobby Darin, Harry Belafonte, B.B. King and Les McCann.

Wilson's longstanding desire to compose for symphony orchestra came to fruition with "Debut: 5/21/72," commissioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1972 by the Philharmonic's musical director, Zubin Mehta. His "Theme for Monterey," composed as a commission by the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1997, received two Grammy nominations. In 2009, on his 91st birthday, he conducted the premiere of his six-movement work, "Detroit Suite," a tribute to the city in which his music career began, commissioned by the Detroit International Jazz Festival.

Gerald Stanley Wilson was born Sept. 4, 1918, in Shelby, Miss. He began to take piano lessons with his mother, a schoolteacher, when he was 6. After purchasing an instrument from the Sears Roebuck catalog for $9.95, he took up the trumpet at age 11. The absence of a high school for African Americans in segregated Shelby made it necessary for him to begin his secondary school studies in Memphis. But a trip with his mother to the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 stimulated a desire to move north, and he was sent to live with friends in Detroit, where he attended and graduated from the highly regarded Cass Technical High School.

An adept trumpeter while still in his teens, Wilson played at Detroit's Plantation Club before joining the Chic Carter Band touring band. In 1939 he replaced trumpeter-arranger Sy Oliver in the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra, then one of the nation's most prominent swing bands.

Wilson served in the U.S. Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center during World War II, then moved to Los Angeles, forming his own big band in 1944. Despite the band's almost immediate success, with nearly 50 recorded pieces and a string of national bookings in its first years of existence, Wilson was not satisfied with his own personal level of craftsmanship. He disbanded the ensemble to spend a few years filling in what he believed were gaps in his music education. He also went on the road with the Count Basie Band and Dizzy Gillespie's group.

Throughout the 1950s and '60s, Wilson was an established participant in L.A.'s busy music scene, arranging, composing for jazz and pop singers, big bands, films and television, while continuing to be active with his own orchestra. Eager to pass on his knowledge and experience, he taught jazz courses at what is now Cal State Northridge, Cal State L.A. and UCLA, and had a radio program on KBCA-FM (105.1) from 1969 to 1976.

As he moved into his 60s, Wilson viewed the commercial activity of his earlier years as the foundation that allowed him to concentrate on his creative efforts.
He had worked hard, he told the Boston Globe, so that in his later years he would no longer "have to go hustling any jobs. I have written for the symphony. I have written for the movies, and I have written for television. I arrange anything. I wanted to do all these things. I've done that. Now I'm doing exactly what I want, musically, and I do it when I please. I'm a musician, but first and foremost, a jazz musician."

Besides his wife and his son, Wilson is survived by daughters Jeri and Nancy Jo, and four grandchildren.

news.obits@latimes.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/arts/music/gerald-wilson-versatile-jazz-arranger-is-dead-at-96.html?_r=0

Music

Gerald Wilson, Versatile Jazz Arranger, Is Dead at 96

by WILLIAM YARDLEY

September 9, 2014

New York Times

**Gerald Wilson performing in Monterey, Calif., in about 1982. Credit Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images**

Gerald Wilson, whose eight-decade career as a jazz composer, arranger, big-band leader and trumpeter spanned generations, styles and geography, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 96.

His son, Anthony, a jazz guitarist, confirmed the death.

Mr. Wilson was not yet 21 when he joined the Jimmie Lunceford band in 1939 as a trumpeter, replacing Sy Oliver, and he was believed to have been the last surviving member of its prewar incarnation. He went on to write and arrange rich and imaginative music for Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and many other major names in jazz. He brought robust harmonies and a wide spectrum of colors to his orchestrations, but he may have been best known for his versatility and his enduring freshness.

“Even if you were chronologically decades or maybe generations younger than Gerald, you always felt like he was the youngest person in the room,” Loren Schoenberg, a saxophonist and conductor who is the artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, said in an interview on Tuesday. “He had none of that feeling that you were hanging out with a guy from the 1930s or 1940s.”

Mr. Wilson was often a behind-the-scenes influence; even if you had never heard of him, you were often hearing him. Usually he was given credit. Sometimes his work was brazenly borrowed.

The memorable melody from “Yard Dog Mazurka,” the stomping hit he wrote for Lunceford (and among Mr. Wilson’s favorites of his own compositions), resurfaced as “Intermission Riff,” a hit for the Stan Kenton band for which Ray Wetzel was credited as the composer. Mr. Wilson considered suing but decided against it. Years later, he wrote for Mr. Kenton — and received credit.

Settled in California by the 1950s, Mr. Wilson showed little regard for stylistic boundaries, working with pop musicians, film composers and his own eclectic and admired big band, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, whose members over the years included the guitarist Joe Pass and the trumpeter Snooky Young. Clean-cut early on, he dropped the neckties, opened his collar and let his hair grow into a mane that became silver with age. He recorded a string of well-received albums on the Pacific Jazz label in the 1960s that included variations on Mexican music and pop and often felt little like the jazz that had come before.

The title song of his 1968 album, “California Soul,” was written by the rhythm-and-blues duo Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. The album also included a version of the Doors’ hit “Light My Fire.”

When Mr. Wilson came to New York in 1988 to take part in an American Jazz Orchestra retrospective of his music, it was his first appearance in the city in 25 years. In an interview with The New York Times that year, he gave a glimpse of his varied career and why he pursued it.

“When I worked for Mercury and Capitol records in the ’50s and ’60s, I did a lot of pop dates, from Bobby Darin to Nancy Wilson,” he told The Times. “I knew how to do it, and using it all made sense as well as money. I worked in commercial music in Hollywood, writing for the Platters, working with Maxwell Davis backing B. B. King. I did Nancy Wilson’s rock-styled stuff. I worked on the country-western albums for Ray Charles. Then I recorded ‘Light My Fire.’ None of it was hard to do, because all of these trends came from jazz people to begin with.”

Gerald Stanley Wilson was born on Sept. 4, 1918, in Shelby, Miss. He began playing piano at 4, learning from his mother, who taught music and other subjects in Shelby’s segregated black schools.

His family later moved to Memphis, where he first saw the Lunceford band perform. By 16 he was living in Detroit, attending Cass Technical High School.

In addition to his son, Mr. Wilson’s survivors include his wife, Josefina Villaseñor; two daughters, Geraldine LeDuff and Nancy Jo Wilson; four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Mr. Wilson left the Lunceford band to serve in the Navy during World War II. After his military service, he formed a big band that performed at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and in 1949 he toured the South with Billie Holiday.

Six decades later, he was still at it. Among his most recent albums was “Monterey Moods” (2007), a suite he composed in honor of the Monterey Jazz Festival, where he first played in 1963.

He was nominated for six Grammy Awards during his career and in 1990 was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Dealing with four- or five-part harmony, the sound can only get that big,” Mr. Wilson, gesturing with his fingers, told The Times in 1988. Then he opened his arms wide. “But with 10 voices, it’s like that.

“With a few voices, the sound of the band can’t ever get any bigger. No matter how loud you play it, it won’t get larger. But I love to orchestrate, because if you know what you are doing, there are no boundaries.”

Correction: September 12, 2014

An obituary on Wednesday about the jazz composer, arranger, bandleader and trumpeter Gerald Wilson referred incorrectly to part of Loren Schoenberg’s work in music. Besides being the artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Mr. Schoenberg, who was quoted praising Mr. Wilson, is a saxophonist and conductor, not a saxophonist and composer.

A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 2014, on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: Gerald Wilson, 96, Versatile Jazz Arranger.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/a-fireside-chat-with-gerald-wilson-gerald-wilson-by-aaj-staff.php

A Fireside Chat With Gerald Wilson

by AAJ STAFF
October 10, 2003

Within the pages of Central Avenue Sounds, Gerald Wilson recalls, “In February of 1940 I came to Los Angeles with the Jimmie Lunceford band.” He emphasizes, “I’ll never forget that day in February. As I looked out the window of my bunk in the sleeper, I see this beautiful sunshine. We were somewhere like San Bernardino. And I said, ‘Well, this is going to be the place for me.’ And when I got to Los Angeles and I saw how pretty it was, I said, ‘This will be my home.’” How fortunate Los Angeles has been to call host to such a musical legend. It is an honor to present Mr. Gerald Wilson (unedited and in his own words). FRED JUNG: Let’s start from the beginning.

GERALD WILSON: My mother was a musician, played piano. She was a schoolteacher. She started all of us on piano when we were about four or five. I’ve been in it ever since.
FJ: Tell me about your time in Jimmie Lunceford’s band.

GW: To get to Jimmie Lunceford, you had to have a whole lot of years. I joined when I was nineteen, but before that period, I played in a band in Memphis, Tennessee. I played music before I left my home in Shelby, Mississippi. I even played when I was ten years old, played the trumpet. In 1939, I joined Jimmie Lunceford. He gave me a lot of pointers on watching him and seeing how to be a bandleader and how to try to be a good musician. He was a good musician, played two or three instruments. He could write and had a band since his college days. They were on top. They were the top musicians in the world. It was another place to go to school. I started doing my writing there. However, I studied it in school. I studied orchestration and harmony with different teachers and I studied very thoroughly. I could already write. I joined them in ’39 and they recorded my first number in 1940. It was a hit for that band. They recorded my second number in 1941. It was another hit for the band.

FJ: But after three years, you left the Lunceford band.

GW: At the time I left Jimmie Lunceford, I was to go into World War II. I had to get ready to go to the service and that is what I did. I moved here and made my home here, even before I left the band. I came here to Los Angeles to stay and wait until I got called. During that period, I had some more experience. I joined Les Hite’s band. It was one of the great bands from California. Benny Carter came out during that same year, 1942, and I joined his band and stayed until I went into the Navy. I was in the Navy in ’43 and ’44. I was in the band that they had there. They just honored us a couple of months ago. We were the first blacks in the United States Navy. Of course, that was another school. It was a good time for learning and doing what you had to do.

FJ: How vibrant was the Los Angeles musical landscape upon your return in the mid-Forties?

GW: It was great. There were fine musicians here. I came back at the end of ’44 and organized my first band here. We had fine musicians. It took us about six months and we were traveling all over the country, playing big clubs all over the country. We were doing very good, not only us, but there were other bands here, Johnny Otis’ fine band was here and many other musicians here in Los Angeles.

FJ: With fortune favoring you, what prompted your hiatus?

GW: It was obvious to me, in two years, my band played in New York, the Apollo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, we played everywhere you can play. We were up there with the top guys. I had Joe Williams singing with my band. We were on top and I realized that I hadn’t even started to do what I wanted to do musically. I wanted to study and do other things. So I decided to disband and study for a few years. In 1948, Count Basie asked me to go away with him for a few months. I went with him and I stayed for two years. That was another place to go and learn. It was another school. I wanted to write for TV and I wanted to write for the movies and I got all those opportunities. I wrote for the Philharmonic. Zubin Mehta conducted all of my numbers. I had five orchestrations in that book and one original composition. It all went my way. I’ve done everything there is to do and now I am into doing what I love, which is jazz.

FJ: How much of an importance do you place on developing compositional and writing skills?

GW: I probably have written so much music, I have forgotten about it. Music weeds you out anyway. To be a professional, you have got to study hard. You’ve got to practice and you’ve got to stay on it because the competition is tough. If you are going to be a professional jazz musician, you have just got to study all the time.

FJ: Having given so much to Los Angeles by visiting public schools and giving clinics, has the community given back to you?

GW: Yes, of course, I love being in the schools. My mother was a schoolteacher. I love being in the schools. I went to replace a fellow at Cal State Northridge for six weeks and I stayed there for thirteen years. When I went there, they had about forty people in the class and when I left, they had just what the auditorium could hold, around two hundred. Then I went to Cal State L.A. and was there six years. The same thing happened there. Then I went to Cal Arts for a couple of years and then I went to UCLA and have been there for twelve years. So you can see, I have about forty years at the college level of teaching my class. My class starting in September will have four hundred and eighty students. That is the largest jazz class in the world.
FJ: What do you try and impart to your students?

GW: The first thing I want to teach is how to try to be a better person. I do that in music. I try to do the best I can. I try to be a good person. I hope I’m a good person. I love people. I love being with them. I want to emphasize the difference between right and wrong. When you leave my class, you’re going to know where jazz came from and when it came and who did it. You will know that and you’ll be able to talk with anybody that wants to speak with you about jazz.

FJ: Where did jazz come from?

GW: Jazz is the music of the black people. It started with the slaves even before they were freed, they were playing jazz. They have carried it on. They have developed it. In the beginning, it was only played by blacks. Whites didn’t even let their own people play it, forbid them to play it. But now, everyone plays it, no matter what you are. Now, the new styles have come in to where it is so technical and so refined. The young guys like Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, and Terence Blanchard, these giants of the trumpet. The point is, it is their folk music. So they don’t have to struggle to play jazz. Jazz is their life. It is my life.

FJ: And it’s been life worthy of mention.

GW: Yes, I’ve met many people in the jazz world. You will find that people in the jazz world are good people. You’ve got to be a good person to play jazz. If you have a bad feeling and everything is negative, you can’t make jazz. You have got to be free so you can play and your goodness can come out. When you are bad, you’re not for jazz. I think jazz is a good thing for a person.

FJ: We need more jazz.

GW: Yes, of course. Jazz integrated in 1920. Black and white musicians started working together then, in 1920. They continued on and all of the sudden, jazz was already integrated. Benny Goodman came in and integrated it more, and Artie Shaw. It integrated long before segregation was banned in the United States.

FJ: Mack Avenue has just released your latest, New York, New Sound, featuring Clark Terry, Kenny Barron, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, among others.

GW: Yes, first of all, Fred, the reason I did it in New York was I was at the IAJE last year in Toronto. I was there to conduct the University of Michigan’s jazz orchestra on a couple of numbers. While I was there, I ran into all of my friends that I had worked and played with, Jimmy Heath. We had played with Dizzy Gillespie together. Also, I ran into Frank Wess. I saw Kenny Barron and I’ve known him for a long time. The idea came to me that I should make an album in New York. I owed New York a lot. I lived there all total of five years. I went back and forth with Ray Charles. I was in New York all the time. I learned so much in New York. I thought I should go back and work with my friends again and make an album with them. I can give something back to New York and repay what they gave me. I love the place. It is a wonderful place and you have to live there to know how wonderful New York is.

FJ: You have received countless awards and accolades, but when Mosaic put out the box set a few years ago of all your Pacific Jazz recordings, I knew your work was finally being recognized beyond the Southern California borders.

GW: Yes, I have done the best I could. Los Angeles is my home. I have lived here for about sixty-two years. It is my home. I love it and this is it. It is a great city.

FJ: As much as this city has given you, you have given more than enough back.

GW: I hope I can give some more (laughing).

FJ: That’s a hope for all of us.

GW: Thank you.

Gerald Wilson talks about his move to Detroit in 1934 at the age of 16 to attend Cass Tech High School and how that experience impacted his life and career.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/15/gerald-wilson

Gerald Wilson obituary

Composer, bandleader and jazz trumpeter who put together many all-star big bands

Gerald Wilson leading the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra at Dizzy's Club in New York, 2006. Photograph: Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images

by Peter Vacher

Monday 15 September 2014

The Guardian (UK)

Watching Gerald Wilson, who has died aged 96, direct an orchestra was an experience in itself. He was balletic, his shock of white hair a trademark, darting this way and that, as he cued sections and controlled dynamics. "I choreograph the music as I conduct. I point it out, everything you're here to listen to," he explained. In a long life that embraced virtually every aspect of African-American music experience, Wilson was active as a jazz trumpeter and an arranger before forming a number of big bands, eventually concentrating on composition and blossoming as an educator. It is no exaggeration to say that he was a jazz phenomenon, a beacon for aspiring musicians and an innovator, ever open to new possibilities.

Wilson was from Shelby, Mississippi, where his father, a blacksmith, played the clarinet and trombone, and his mother taught music. Wilson's sister was an excellent classical pianist and his elder brother also played "nice jazz on the piano", he told the journalist Kirk Silsbee. Already adept at the piano and entranced by the bands that passed through Shelby on their way to and from New Orleans, his head turned by the music of Duke Ellington, the young Wilson opted for the trumpet.

He moved to Detroit when he was 16 and gained entry to the prestigious Cass Technical high school, where the tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray was one of his classmates. Wilson soon began working in local bands, gradually making his way through their ranks until, aged 20, he joined the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, then at its peak as one of the best-paid and most successful black bands in America. It was with Lunceford's encouragement that Wilson emerged as a soloist and began to compose. His Yard Dog Mazurka proved to be a hit and provided the template for Stan Kenton's huge success with Intermission Riff, which used Wilson's harmonic sequence, although he received no credit for it.

In 1942, Wilson moved to Los Angeles and stayed for good, working as a trumpeter with the crack orchestras of Benny Carter and Les Hite, before a stint with the US navy. Here again he fell on his feet as he joined the all-black Great Lakes naval band, staffed by musicians including the trumpeter Clark Terry and the saxophonist Willie Smith. "All I had to do was write music and play in the band. It was a time to hone your craft," he told Silsbee.

Once back in LA, Wilson formed the first of his big bands, to tour with the ex-Ellington singer Herb Jeffries. When Jeffries pulled out at the last minute, Wilson took the band on the road and made good, playing the best houses and theatres on the black circuit, often with the top stars of the day, and recording for labels including Excelsior and Black and White. Tuned in to the possibilities of bebop, Wilson was always proud that his band recorded Groovin' High in 1945, before its composer Dizzy Gillespie's own big-band version. Surprisingly, he later walked away from this success, saying that he had got to the top too soon and needed to study more. "There was still so much more to learn," he explained.

By 1948, Wilson was back in the fray, travelling with Count Basie as arranger and occasional player, also accepting short-term assignments to orchestrate pieces for Ellington, before joining Gill- espie in 1949 as trumpeter and writer. He then became an arranger-for-hire, supplying charts to other big bands and providing musical settings for pop albums featuring Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London and Bobby Darin. He also assisted Ellington with the score for Otto Preminger's 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder and was the musical director for the comedian Redd Foxx's popular ABC-TV variety show.

Of more moment perhaps to his jazz audience, Wilson began a fruitful association with the Pacific Jazz label in LA in the early 1960s, putting together all-star big bands and creating a series of powerful albums that stand among his finest achievements. These deployed Wilson's innovatory and unique approach to harmony: "I write whole ensembles with eight-part harmony. I call it 'the Diminished Triangle'. That's my legacy. I'm the first one to use it," he told me in 2005, adding, "I've given to jazz the best I have."

Wilson also composed extended works for concert ensembles and, inspired by his Mexican-American wife Josefina, wrote music dedicated to the Mexican bullfighters he had befriended. He toured with his occasional big band in both the US and Europe, appearing in London to conduct the BBC Big Band in 2005. He continued to produce a stream of brilliant new compositions, hosted his own radio show and, from 1970, taught a jazz history course, latterly at the University of California, Los Angeles, where his classes often attracted 400 students. His final hurrah with the Mack Avenue label resulted in a series of richly orchestrated album suites dedicated to New York, Chicago, Detroit and Monterey.

Wilson is survived by Josefina, his daughters, Jeri and Nancy Jo, his son, Anthony, who is a jazz guitarist, and four grandchildren.

• Gerald Stanley Wilson, composer, bandleader and jazz trumpeter, born 4 September 1918; died 8 September 2014

http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2009/07/gerald-wilson-then-and-now-part-2.html

July 15, 2009

Gerald Wilson - Then and Now: Part 2

“Gerald has an uncanny harmonic sense which produces quite an emotional experience.”

– Richard Bock

“Wilson’s writing leans toward thick, textured sounds in which the arrangements are as prominent as the soloists.” – Ted Gioia

“Your first ten years are thrown away. If you did pretty good for those ten years, you’re just starting.”

- Gerald Wilson to Pete Watrous

“Writing is easy for me now. Writing is just a memory anyway – you just remember everything you learned and just put it down.”

- Gerald Wilson to Jon Garelick

“The legacy of Gerald Wilson and the Monterey Jazz Festival are closely linked. From his first visits to Monterey in the early 1960's playing and hanging out with Diz and Monk to his commission pieces for our 25th, 40th and now 50th anniversary, Gerald's spirit has infused the festival with his unique brand of artistry, humanity and pure, swingin' fun. Gerald Wilson and the Monterey Jazz Festival have helped create a vibrant and long-lasting west coast musical spirit. It's a great partnership and we are honored to be associated with him!”

--Tim Jackson, General Manager, Monterey Jazz Festival

“Playing with Gerald Wilson is always such a joy and an inspiration, as is hearing the results. … you'll also discover Gerald Wilson the person ... intelligent, wise, full of joy and classy, just like his compositions.”

--Jon Faddis

“Gerald Wilson is one of the greatest composers and arrangers living today. Monterey Moods, is another example of his genius.”

--Kenny Burrell

“Gerald Wilson's longevity with his creativity alone gives testimony to his value as an international treasure.”

--Hubert Laws

No doubt one of the reasons that for many of us the Gerald Wilson Orchestra of the decade of the 1960's seemed to appear fully formed from out of nowhere was due to the scarcity of available recordings that featured earlier variants of his orchestra.

Jazz fans should all give thanks to the advent of the compact disc, because it has helped bring forward some of the exciting, earlier recordings from Mr. Wilson’s Orchestra

Thankfully, too, Richard Bock of Pacific Jazz Records and Albert Marx of Discovery/Trend Records stepped in to prevent this scarcity from spreading further with a veritable explosion of Mr. Wilson on record in the 1960's.

Longevity has not diminished Mr. Wilson’s creative powers and this along with his accumulated body of work has afforded him a stature that has resulted in a number of recordings that continued to document his work well into the first decade of the 21^st century.

This 2nd portion of the feature on Mr. Wilson will spend time with reviews of some of these recordings - “Then and Now?”

It will also delve into Mr. Wilson’s treatment of melody, harmony, rhythm and texture that combined to make his composing and arranging styles so distinctive.

Before doing so, let’s turn to Doug Ramsey’s always informative and insightful insert notes to The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra [Mosaic MD5-198] for a brief review of the salient features of Mr. Wilson’s career.

“The great lead trumpeter and soloist Snooky Young left Count Basie in 1944 to join a new band Gerald Wilson had formed in Los Angeles. "Everybody thought I was crazy for leaving Basie to go with Gerald," Young said on a National Public Radio Jazz Profiles program, "but it was a friendship thing. I wasn't aware of doing anything crazy and I didn't, because it was very good for me to play with Gerald's first band. We went on to New York and played the Apollo Theater, and for a young, new band, we did a lot of big things."

If Young was gambling, he hedged his bet with inside information. From the days when they sat together in the Jimmie Lunceford trumpet section, he knew the 26-year-old Wilson's abilities as a player and a composer-arranger. Wilson's early work for Lunceford sent advance notice of a writer who brought a new kind of harmonic richness to big band arranging. Musicians across the country took notice, as did an 11-year-old fan who said the Lunceford band was what made him decide in 1941 to become a musician. "There were two tunes that Gerald Wilson wrote for that band that just laid me out," pianist and composer Horace Silver said on Jazz Profiles. "They were on the same record, flip sides. One was called In SPOOK. The other was called YARD DOG MAZURKA. The arrangements and the melodies knocked me out."

Silver was not alone in his admiration. In 1946, Ray Wetzel purloined the essential elements Of YARD DOG MAZURKA to make INTERMISSION RIFF for the Stan Kenton band.

The few recordings of Wilson's 1944-1947 band make it plain that the notice and excitement it caused were justified. Pieces like CRUISIN' WITH CAB, DISSONANCE IN BLUE and his arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie’s GROOVIN' HIGH establish that this young leader achieved a canny balance between the proven values of swing and the challenging innovations of bebop. The band was a hit in Los Angeles in its debut engagement of two months at Shepp's Playhouse, followed by a run at the Orpheum Theater, then dates in San Francisco, Oakland, Denver and at New York's Apollo Theater. At the Apollo, Wilson and his men followed Duke Ellington. The Daily News wrote, "A young band from California opened at the Apollo today, and you wouldn't know that Duke Ellington had closed."

There was something new and unusual in the density of Wilson's chord voicings, particularly in the brass section. In an oral history inter-view for the MAMA archives, Wilson said of his work in those years, "My record of GROOVIN' HIGH (1945) proves that we were the most adventurous orchestra of the year. No other bands were into what we did. My players were all playing bebop. My pianist, Jimmy Bunn, was on Charlie Parker’s LOVER MAN session. We had an arrangement of OUT OF THIS WORLD that I reharmonized the structure for - I used all alternate chords. If the [original] chord was B-flat minor, I used the alternative, D-flat major. About everything was alternate. Also, I used a couple of tempo changes."

And yet, Wilson's use of ideas - known in 20th-century classical music but rare in jazz - attracted listeners who might have been intimidated by a band like Boyd Raeburn's that was taking such notions a step or two further. It was not out of the question to mention Wilson's band in the same breath as Basie's, Ellington's, Herman's and Kenton's. Although the economic indicators were not good for continuation of he big band boom, it may be that Wilson had the talent, leadership ability and charisma to carry him through the hard times that caused most of the nation's big bands to fold by the end of the decade. He signed a three-year contract with Mercury Records. His band recorded with Dinah Washington, broke all attendance records in St. Louis on a tour with Ella Fitzgerald, was set to tour for 15 weeks in a package with Louis Jordan's phenomenally popular band. After less than three years as a bandleader, Wilson was at the top.

He thought he had gotten there too soon. In 1947, he disbanded. "I decided when I closed with Ella that I was going to have to study some more. I wanted to be able to write anything," he told Jazz Profiles. "I wanted to be able to write for the symphony orchestra; I wanted to write for the movies; I wanted to write for television. I wanted to be able to do it with great speed, great accuracy, and that's what I did. But I didn't stop playing."

Wilson holed up with scores, analyzing works by Stravinsky, Debussy, Falla, Ravel, Kabalevsky, Khatchaturian, Bartok. In a prodigy of self-teaching, he absorbed the techniques of those classical masters. He would apply their lessons for all the years of his long career. He achieved each of his goals, including works for symphony orchestra, motion pictures and TV, but especially writing prolifically for big bands, his own and others. Half a year into his study exile, he got a call from another leader asking him for help. It was Duke Ellington. He wrote for Ellington off and on for most of the rest of Duke's life, and occasionally filled out the trumpet section when Ellington needed an additional horn. Later in 1948, he joined Count Basie, playing and writing. "That was study, too," he says, "sitting where swing really happened. That great rhythm section was really the common denominator for swing." After Basic disbanded in 1949, Wilson joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band. For Basic he wrote the lovely ballad KATY and with Basie composed ST. LOUIS BABY. For Gillespie he arranged GUARACHI GUARO, which became influential in the development of Latin jazz in the '40s and had a second life when Cal Tjader adapted it in the '50s. During all of that extracurricular activity, Wilson continued studying and preparing for his next steps.

Before long, Gillespie Joined the parade of disbanders, forced out of the band business by changing economics, tastes and culture. Billie Holiday's manager asked Wilson to put together a big band to back the singer on a tour. Johnny Coles, Philly Joe Jones, Melba Liston, Willie Cook and a number of other fine musicians were among his players. Despite the quality ingredients, the venture did not go well. Crowds were small. "We were out on the road not making any money," Gerald says, "and Melba and I wound up feeding the guys and paying their rent and we went broke." He returned to Los Angeles.

In 1950, Wilson was music director for an L.A. television musical variety program than ran for six months. He arranged and conducted, but was never shown on the screen. Through the 1950s that was typical television policy regarding black musicians. In 1951, Gerald and his wife Josefina moved to San Francisco. His band in the Bay Area included trombonist Bob Collins, pianist Cedric Haywood, and two saxophonists, Jerry Dodgion and Jerome Richardson, who would become mainstays of the New York jazz scene in the late '50s and early '60s.

Back in Los Angeles in 1954, Wilson put together a band, in what was the beginning of what he describes as his commercial period, which lasted for most of the '50s. "I was doing a lot of writing in those days for shows, at the Moulin Rouge in Las Vegas and other places, and for rhythm and blues artists, Jackie Davis among others. My deal in those days was mostly writing and orchestrating. The big band worked whenever we had an engagement."

Richard Bock, president of Pacific Jazz records, had a roster of some of the most prominent musicians in what had come to be called the West Coast Jazz movement. They included Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Bud Shank and Bob Gordon. Bock did not have a big band on his label.

"I knew Dick Bock and had followed his work," Wilson told me. "The first time I approached him about recording, in 1953, was at a Billy Eckstine record date I was visiting. And there were other occasions through the '50s when I ran into him and brought it up. He explained that, for various reasons, it was hard to record a big band. But in 1960, he called me. He had set up a deal through Albert Marx to record me."

Wilson was under contract to Marx, the president of Discovery and Trend Records. Bock recorded the successful series of Gerald Wilson albums for Pacific Jazz, but Marx owned the records. As they do today, Wilson's sidemen constituted a cross section of Los Angeles jazz players, black and white, youngsters and veterans, from the studios and the clubs. They had in common the musicianship Wilson could quickly observe and sometimes sense in a potential member. His leadership is based on mutual respect and his magnetism, not on strictness. He has more in common with Ellington and Herman than with disciplinarians like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Buddy Rich. Trumpeter Bobby Rodriguez, who has played for Wilson in recent years, talked on the NPR program about the first time he saw Wilson in action.

"The way he moved his hands, the way he grouped the guys together, his ability to talk, his ability to laugh, make the audience have fun. It was his whole impact, not just the 18-piece orchestra, but his person."

"I don't have any pep talks with my men at all," Wilson says. "We hardly rehearse, unless we're going to make a recording date. Maybe we'll run it over once or twice, not like these bands that rehearse every week. The music's there and it's always going to be a certain quality. I don't get angry at the guys when they miss a note. It doesn't bother me. jazz, to me, has to be loose. You can't be tight. When you get too tight in jazz, it isn't making it. Same thing with Duke Ellington. He let his band be relaxed, be loose, take it easy. Nobody gets excited here. You're late? Okay, so you're late. Let's play." ….

Wilson’s writing is absolutely up to date, or a bit beyond, while observing the eternal blues truths.

And so it remains in performances by his orchestras of the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and a new century, in the ears, hearts and minds of his listeners, and in tangible form in the nation’s capitol. In 1996, the Library of Congress honored Wilson’s lifetime achievement by establishing a Gerald Wilson archive. Generations of musicians, scholars and admirers will be able to study a comprehensive collection of his compositions, arrangements, orchestrations and recordings….”

Before moving on to a review of some of the recordings in Mr. Wilson’s discography, perhaps an effort might be made at identifying those characteristics that make his style so distinctive.

In this regard, it might be helpful to keep the following distinction by author Mark Gridley from his Jazz Styles: History and Analysis in mind:

“By comparison with all other big bands, the Wilson band achieved a groove that more closely resembles hard bop. The moods were funky and earthy, as though Wilson had created a big-band equivalent to the organ/tenor sax combos that were common at inner city taverns during the 1950’s and 1960s.” [p. 291]

Also helpful is the following representation by Ted Gioia from his West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 which bears repeating from the opening quotations to this piece:

“Wilson’s writing leans toward thick textured sounds in which the arrangements are as prominent as the soloists. Some have traced a Kenton influence in his work …” [p. 142].

Both Gridley and Gioia focus on the “texture” of Mr. Wilson’s music.

As we shall see, a number of other writers in their reviews of Mr. Wilson’s recordings also stress the “texture” of his music as something that makes it so unique and so appealing.

But what is a musical definition of “texture” which joins with melody, harmony and rhythm [meter] as a fourth building block used to create a musical composition?

Ironically, of these four basic musical atoms, the most indefinable yet the one we first notice is – texture.

Texture is the word that is used to refer to the actual sound of the music. This encompasses the instruments with which it is played; its tonal colors; its dynamics; its sparseness or its complexity.

Texture involves anything to do with the sound experience and it is the word that is used to describe the overall impression that a piece of music creates in our emotional imagination.

Often our first and most lasting impression of a composition is usually based on that work’s texture, even though we are not aware of it. Generally, we receive strong musical impressions from the physical sound of any music and these then determine our emotional reaction to the work.

Beyond the texture or sound of his music and the lasting physical and emotional impact it can create, Mr. Wilson’s music is also heavily rhythmic – the most visceral and fundamental of all the musical elements.

Music takes place in time and like many great composers, Mr. Wilson uses rhythms and the relationships between rhythms to express many moods and musical thoughts.

He uses rhythm to provide a primal, instinctive kind of foundation for the other musical thoughts [themes and motifs] to build upon.

This combination of powerful, repetitive rhythmic phrases and the manner in which he textures the sound of his music over them provides many of Mr. Wilson’s compositions with a magisterial quality.

Another of Mr. Wilson’s great skills as a composer is that he never seems to be at a loss for the new rhythms that he needs to create musical interest in his work. He is a master at using the creative tension between unchanging meter and constantly changing rhythms and these rhythmic variations help to produce a vitality in his music.

In his use of melody, Mr. Wilson’s approach to composing, arranging and orchestrating appears to have much in common with the Classical composers of the late 18^th and early 19^th century [Mozart & Beethoven as examples] in that he relies on a series of measured and balanced musical phrases as the mainstay of much of his work.

And like these Classical composers, Mr. Wilson is also careful not to let one musical element overwhelm the others: balance between elements is as important as balance within any one of them.

Mr. Wilson obviously places a high value on melody in his writing as his themes have a way of finding themselves into one’s subconscious and staying there a la – “I can’t get this tune out of my head.”

This is in large part because Mr. Wilson’s melodies are actually easily remembered short phrases, generally four or eight bars in length and these are often heard in combination with other similar phrases to fashion something akin to a musical mosaic with individual pieces joining together to create a musical whole.

Mr. Wilson crafts little melodic devices that are wonderful examples of the composer’s art. And he has learned over the years to base his compositions out of the fewest possible melodic building blocks because if there too many melodies, or for that matter, too many rhythms and too many different chords in a piece, the listener can get confused and eventually bored.

And on the subject of chords, the building blocks of harmony, here Mr. Wilson’s approach involving multi-part harmony is more akin to modern composers such as Debussy, Bartok and Stravinsky than to those of the Classical period.

Mr. Wilson pioneered the application of 8-part harmony to Jazz writing for big bands. Turning again to Doug Ramsey’s insert notes to the Mosaic set of Mr. Wilson’s Pacific Jazz recordings, he explains that “I asked the composer and orchestrator Jeff Sultanoff about the use of eight-part harmony in jazz and Wilson’s role in it. Sultanoff said:

“As Gerald defines it, it means that in an eight-part brass section, all parts are different, no doubling octaves and such. He was probably the first to do this, although other arrangers had tried similar things. I can think of Pete Rugolo as an immediate example, but he did not start doing it until 1946, whereas Gerald claims that he was doing it as early as 1945. I can also think of Ellington and Strayhorn who did not voice ensembles in the “standard” way. There are isolated examples of it in Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan’s work, but I don’t recall anyone doing it on a regular basis before Gerald.”

While it is always challenging at best to attempt to describe music in words, this overview of Mr. Wilson’s use of the four musical atoms – rhythm, melody, harmony and texture – may be helpful to listen for as we now turn to a review of selections from his discography.

As was noted earlier, the advent of the compact discs has once again made available music by artists who were recording before the advent of the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing album and/or who were recording for very small and relatively obscure labels [Excelsior and Black & White!].

Although, Mr. Wilson’s first recordings fall into both of these categories, many of them can now be found on three CD reissues: [1] Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1945-46 [The Classic Chronological Series #976], [2] Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1946-54 [The Classic Chronological Series #1444]; Big Band Modern [The Jazz Factory JFCD 22880].

The movie writer and actor Les Carter was quoted in Arnold Schenker’s insert notes to Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1945-46 as saying:

“Gerald does all things well. He is a craftsman in every way. He hand picks the musicians carefully, he selects the material, and then he bolsters the band and the audience with his own enthusiasm and exuberance. Gerald is a total musician. He touches all bases, and like a good a good director he is the man in charge.”

Three of the highlights on this CD for me are Mr. Wilson’s arrangements of Groovin’ High, Cruisin’ with Cab and One O’clock Jump, all of which indicate the very innovative direction his big band arranging was taking at this early date.

And Richard Cook and Brian Morton offer these observations in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD:

“After a short stint in the Navy at the end of the Second World War, the talented trumpeter and composer decided to form his own band. It was a progressive outfit … [with a] faintly experimental air … [and] these early recordings are full of interest.

Although he features as a trumpeter on Duke’s “Come Sunday” his main role is as arranger, turning in crisp, intelligent charts which anticipate the work of later years. There is already a signature Wilson sound: slightly dark, over-toned, regular without being robotic. … Even when the sound is less than pristine, the content I always involving.”

And here is Michael Nastos excellent and comprehensive review of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1946-54 as written for www.allmusic.com:

After leaving Detroit and arriving in Los Angeles, Gerald Wilson formed his first big band in 1944. By 1946 he was firmly established as a fine trumpet player, arranger, and composer, and was developing a style fit not only for modern jazz, but also eventually film scores. The dramatics apropos for both formats is evident on this second installment of Wilson's chronological recordings for the Classics reissue label, culled from recordings originally on the Black & White, United Artists, Excelsior, Federal, King, and Audio Lab labels.

There are five different mid-sized orchestras with musicians from L.A., all quite literate and displaying different areas of expertise, and Wilson writes with each player's individual sound in mind. Of course they work as a unified whole, and you get to hear a lot of Wilson's trumpet work.

The Black & White sessions from 1946 have the band swinging very hard on the happy bop-bop "Et-ta," while hoppin' and barkin' for "The Saint." The opposite slow side is shown on "Pensive Mood" and the sad, dreary "The Moors." These tracks feature then-young trombonist, composer, and arranger Melba Liston, who of course would go on to great acclaim. Recordings from 1947 for United Artists and Excelsior feature vocalist Dan Grissom, showcased on two ballads, displaying a large range and somewhat effeminate style, and there's a finger-snappin' group vocal with Grissom, Liston, and Trummy Young, "Va-ance," that approaches the territory of the Modernaires.

Four more for Excelsior in 1949 reveal Wilson moving into film noir, hinted at by the spy movie piece "Dissonance in Blues" from the 1947 cuts, but more pronounced here. Wilson is assertive on his horn, and ramps up the dramatic tension on the stairstep motif of "The Black Rose" while also offering an expanded version of "Guarachi-Guaro," the second section infusing expansive oboe and flute. Here the outstanding West Coast alto saxophonist Buddy Collette also enters the fray.

Jumping up to 1954, Wilson offers up three two-part pieces all prominently showcasing the exotic vibrato flute sound of Bill Green — the hot and spicy "Mambo Mexicano," dynamic up-and-down desert dune caravan-ish "Algerian Fantasy," and slow-as-sunset "Lotus Land." These are much more provocative, but in addition, the band is loaded with all-stars like trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Britt Woodman, tenor saxophonists Paul Gonsalves and Teddy Edwards, and a very young Jerry Dodgion on alto sax. These cuts use pronounced world music elements in a way that Duke Ellington hinted at, and all are exuberant and levitating. The remaining pieces are the contradictory titled hard bopper "Romance," Khachaturian’s famous Spanish classical ballad "Bull Fighter," and a different "Black Rose" (unknown author) than the one written by Wilson heard earlier on the CD. This collection really drives home how this group, unique unto itself, was able to stretch stereotypical big-band jazz and take it into a new arena, fueled by the vast imagination of Gerald Wilson. The only unsolved mystery: un-attributed credits about various clearly audible Latin percussionists who are never identified.”

Writing in his insert notes to Big Band Modern, Matias Rinar offer the following comments on the significance of the recordings and its music:

This release presents an ultra rare LP by the Gerald Wilson orchestra for the first time ever on CD. Although he recorded innumerable sessions as an arranger and as a trumpeter, this is the only studio session recorded by Wilson under his own name between 1947 and 1961, when he began a long term recording contract with Pacific records. The only exceptions to this are two short vocal sides that were also cut in L.A. in 1954, for the small label called "Hollywood", under the title "Linda Hayes accompanied by Gerald Wilson and his orchestra".

What makes "Big Band Modern" even more interesting is that six of the eight tunes on the album were composed by Wilson himself. The two remaining pieces were written by contemporary European composers. "Lotus Land" belongs to the eccentric English composer Cyril Scott (18791970), who was known as a poet and occultist, in addition to his work as a composer. A dear friend of Percy Grainger, Scott's music was admired by Debussy, Stravinsky and Richard Strauss. Originally written for the piano, "Lotus Land" is Scott's most famous piece, arranged here by Wilson for his big band. Aram Khachaturian's "Bull Fighter" is the album's only other composition not written by Wilson. A Russian composer of Armenian origin, Khachaturian (1903-1978) was one of the leading soviet composers of his time, along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich…..

Considering the dearth of Wilson’s recordings with his own band during this period, the 1950 concert recorded in San Francisco – which is included on this release as a bonus – is, without a doubt, an essential addition to Wilson’s recorded legacy, an extremely important discographic discovery. In fact, this concert has never been previously released on any format.

Of the concert's seven tracks, three of them - "Sea Breeze" and both versions of "Hollywood Freeway" - are compositions by Wilson, performed by his band with the addition of several superlative guest stars. Alto saxophonist Sonny Criss ... shines on the first version of "Hollywood Freeway", while the three tenor guests - none other than Stan Getz, Wardell Gray and Zoot Sims can be heard here in top form on the second one. The four standards are showcase pieces for the tenor soloists. We are fortunate to add two new performances to Wardell Gray's short discography. He plays here on "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Indiana". "Out of Nowhere" is a feature for Stan Getz (notice the way he quotes "Broadway"!). "It Had to Be You" is Zoot Sims' solo feature, but it is unfortunately incomplete at the tune's climax, because the original recording machine ran out of tape! However, Zoot can be heard well on the last orchestral tune.

Beyond the mentioned little inconvenience, the excellent sound quality of this concert is surprising. It was originally recorded in Stereo, which was a completely new technology in 1950. Together, both of these very rare sessions cover an interesting gap in Gerald Wilson's career, preceding the true gems that would come in the following years.”

And now we come to the bonanza that are the 1960s recordings by Mr. Wilson on the Pacific Jazz [8] and World Pacific [2] labels, all 10 of which have all been collected and reissued with superbly remixed audio quality as The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra [Mosaic MD5-198].

As has already been alluded to but bears repeating nonetheless, one shudders to think of what would have been the case for Mr. Wilson’s recording career had it not been for the perspicacity of Richard Bock and Albert Marx, the President of Discovery and Trend Records.

Between 1961 and 1969, ten albums – eight on Pacific Jazz and two on World Pacific – were recorded and issued under Mr. Wilson’s name [those Pacific Jazz LPs involving his work with trumpeter Carmell Jones and pianist/vocalist Les McCann are not included in the Mosaic set].

Ironically this gushing forth of recording activity for Mr. Wilson and his orchestra in the 1960s was occurring when the number of big bands was an ever-dwindling number. However, since Mr. Wilson chose to populate his orchestra with professionals musicians whose main livelihood was derived from work in the Hollywood studios, thus limiting it to local appearance and recordings, he was never subjected to the rigors of trying to make it on the road with his 1960’s orchestra.

Fortunately for Mr. Wilson, there was still enough of a big band Jazz market in existence in the 1960s and his exciting orchestra’s recordings did very well in terms of overall sales.

Here are two compendiums of the Mosaic The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra. The first is by C. Andrew Hovan writing in www.allaboutjazz.com:

“Even with the reissue boon that has resulted in so much obscure music seeing the light of day, certain artists have not fared well when it comes to the availability of their work. Dick Bock’s Pacific Jazz imprimatur falls under the Blue Note/Capitol umbrella, but past reissues have seemed to focus on “cool school” items with sets from Chet Baker, Bud Shank, and Bill Perkins being the norm. Hard bop artists such as Curtis Amy, Paul Bryant, Frank Butler, The Jazz Crusaders, Charles Kynard and Gerald Wilson have been much less represented in the entire scheme of things. In Wilson’s case, out of the ten albums he made during his stay with Pacific Jazz, only two have ever been reissued on CD in the United States. This sad state of affairs is certainly put right with Mosaic’s new packaging of the entire output of Wilson’s Pacific Jazz sides as a leader, although the terrific sessions he arranged for Les McCann and Carmel Jones are not included here and will hopefully see their own reissue at some later date.

With experience as an arranger for Jimmy Lunceford behind him, gifted writer and bandleader Gerald Wilson set up his own big band in 1944 and has actively maintained an ensemble of some kind or another ever since. By the time he hooked up with Dick Bock and Pacific Jazz in 1961, Wilson had already become one of the most distinguished composers and arrangers of his era. Unfortunately, the mere fact that he resided on the West Coast meant that he was not as well known to record buyers of the time as Count Basie or Duke Ellington. You Better Believe It is notable for the appearance of organist Groove Holmes, soon to become a major seller for Pacific Jazz in his own right. “The Wailer” and “Blues For Yna Yna” are particularly choice on this memorable maiden voyage.

The first of many tributes to matadors (bull fighting being one of Wilson’s favorite pastimes), “Viva Tirado” makes its appearance on Moment of Truth. The homage scheme reaches its ultimate fruition on Portraits, with pieces dedicated to matador Paco Camino, master musician Ravi Shankar, composer Aram Khachaturian, and jazz great Eric Dolphy. Soloists Joe Pass, Teddy Edwards, and Jack Wilson play prominent roles in all three of these aforementioned quintessential albums.

Giving a jazzy update to pop material of the day was not uncommon during the ‘60s. Duke Ellington, of course, made an entire album of his own version of the score from “Mary Poppins.” Wilson was also ingenious enough to handle such challenging assignments, although the closest he ever got to an entire album of pop-inflected material was on Feelin’ Kinda Blues. Even here though, Wilson’s integrity as an arranger comes shining through on such unlikely numbers as the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and James Browns’ “I Feel Good.”

The Golden Sword, from 1966, is one of the best Wilson albums of the entire Pacific Jazz lot and it features the “Latin tinge” that Jelly Roll Morton often spoke of, with bullfighting and Mexican motifs also exploited to their fullest. “Carlos” is another tribute to a bullfighter, in this case being Carlos Arruza. Other highly attractive pieces include “Blues Latinese” and “The Feather.” Never content to stay too long in one area however, it was back to more traditional forms for the next set which documented a few evenings from the bands’ stay at Marty’s On The Hill in Los Angeles. Trumpeter Charles Tolliver, a truly inventive talent who has yet to receive his dues, makes his debut with the band on this occasion and his own early masterpiece, “The Paper Man,” is part of the program.

The final threesome of Wilson albums for Pacific Jazz ( Everywhere, California Soul, and Eternal Equinox ) carries us through to the end of the ‘60s. Occasional pop material figured into the mix, such as “Light My Fire,” “Aquarius,” and “Sunshine of You Love,” yet Wilson’s ability to transcend material (Oliver Nelson was another genius in this department) insures that each of these albums has more than enough valuable music to make for an easy recommendation. In short, the entire body of work as presented in this collection is worthy of rediscovery, not just those known entities. In addition, prominent artists to play a part in these closing sets include Bobby Hutcherson, Roy Ayers, Bud Shank, and Anthony Ortega

For devoted Mosaic followers the usual packaging remains constant; a 12 x 12 box houses the five compact discs and a 20-page booklet. In addition to a complete discography and session-by-session annotation by writer Doug Ramsey, there are a wealth of photos from such photographers as Ray Avery, Woody Woodward, and Francis Wolff.”

And the second compendium of the Mosaic The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra is by Harvey Pekar which appeared in the JazzTimes [April, 2001].

“These are among the finest of all large ensemble jazz recordings of the past 50 years, and Gerald Wilson is a great big-band composer/arranger/leader, although he has not received enough credit for a couple of major reasons. He came to the fore after the end of the big band era, and his outfits did not tour. Hopefully, this five-CD set will refocus attention on his major accomplishments.

From 1939 to 1942, Wilson not only played trumpet with Jimmie Lunceford, but also wrote charts for him, including "Yard Dog Mazurka," some of which was incorporated into "Intermission Riff," and "Hi Spook." During World War II he played in Willie Smith's Great Lakes Naval Training Station Band, and by the time he was discharged or shortly thereafter had assimilated a lot of bop into his writing style, as his earliest (1945 and 1946) big-band discs indicate. His recordings as a big bandleader were infrequent, however, until this series of LPs he cut for Pacific from 1961 to 1969.

The bands Wilson wrote for at that time were Los Angeles-based, post-bop all-star units containing top echelon section players and soloists including trumpeters Carmell Jones, Conte Candoli, Charles Tolliver and ace lead player Al Porcino, woodwind men Teddy Edwards, Harold Land, Walter Benton, Joe Maini, Jimmy Woods, Bud Shank, Buddy Collette, Anthony Ortega and Jack Nimitz, pianists Jack Wilson and Jimmy Rowles, guitarist Joe Pass, vibists Roy Ayers and Bobby Hutcherson, bassists Leroy Vinnegar and Jimmy Bond and drummers Mel Lewis and Frank Butler. The first album Wilson made with Pacific featured the work of organist Richard "Groove" Holmes, and it's a tribute to his ability as an arranger that he uses Holmes very sensitively, so that a nice balance is maintained between his playing and the rest of the band.

Wilson's compositions here reflect his wide range of musical interests. There are a number of blues of various sorts here, including his well-known blues waltz "Blues for Yna Yna." Wilson often wrote in 3/4 meter. "Aram" is interesting partly because of the inclusion of a taste of 4/4 in this mainly 3/4 composition. It keeps listeners on their toes.

There are also Spanish and Latin American influences here, as heard on "Viva Tirado," "Latino," "Paco" and "Teri," during which Wilson employs Pass playing acoustic guitar. There are many references in Wilson's music to things Mexican, including compositions dedicated to bullfighters in that country. Spanish composer Manuel DeFalla influenced "Caprichos," and there's also an adaptation by Wilson of a DeFalla theme, "Chanson du Feu Follet." Modal selections include Wilson's original "Patterns" and versions of "Milestones" and "So What." When Wilson's band wants to lay back its ears and swing, it does so with the best of them, as on "Emerge," "Eric" and "Perdido." And if you dig lovely ballads, try "Josefina," "El Viti" and a very nice cover of "'Round Midnight."

Wilson's arrangements are uniformly rich and full of contrasts. On "El Viti" he employs eight-part harmony for brass. The quality of the solos is consistently high. Not only is Wilson's band full of fine improvisers, they play with constant inspiration. Many are familiar to knowledgeable jazz fans, but a few aren't. Pay particular attention to the alto-sax work of Anthony Ortega, who played Charlie Parkerish solos in 1953 when he was with Lionel Hampton, but continued to evolve and improve his chops into the 1960s. Here his work may have a general similarity to Eric Dolphy's, but is quite original and full of imagination and surprises.”

To conclude this odyssey into Mr. Wilson’s musical world let’s turn to three of his more recent recordings: [1] Theme for Monterey - 2003 [2] New York New Sound - 2003 and In My Time 2005.

As Kirk Silsbee explains by way of background in his insert notes to Theme for Monterey[MAMA Foundation MMF 1021]:

“1963 was a momentous year for the Monterey Jazz Festival. Modern Jazz, in the form of Miles, Monk, Mulligan and the Modern Quartet, studded the bill. Clearly, the Monterey Jazz festival had come of age. Jimmy Lyons, the festival’s founder, had already presented the best of the remaining jazz orchestras from the Golden Age: Duke, Basie, Woody, Harry James. Now Lyons would indulge his own special passion, big band music, in an important way.

Gerald Wilson, at the cutting edge of jazz orchestration, was given the dominant big band forum that weekend in September. The Los Angeles bandleader whose musical lieutenants included Teddy Edwards, Harold Land, Jack Wilson and Joe Pass, would give the jazz world a message: the future is this way.

Riding on the success of its Pacific Jazz albums, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra delivered an object lesson in the possibilities of big band music. Demanding time signatures, multiple key changes, intricate harmonies and, above all, swing, were explored in a new and exciting way. Louis-Victor Mialy, reviewing the Festival for the Paris-based Jazz magazine, viewed Wilson’s showing as the most exciting thing he’d seen since Dizzy brought his orchestra to France in 1948.”

Echoing the tone of Mr. Silsbee’s remarks is this review of the recording which appears in Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD:

“Wilson was a natural choice for the keynote new work at the 4oth anniversary Monterey Jazz Festival. Prestigious as such a commission is, no one could have expected a piece of such grave and joyous brilliance as Theme For Monterey. At more than three quarters of an hour, it has a scope and simplicity of purpose which few contemporary players would have dared, and yet repeated listening reveals a whole raft of subtle ideas, personal and musicological references. The 'encore' pieces, 'Summertime' and the brief bop exercise of Anthropology, offer just a glimpse of how a Wilson band attacks repertory material. Both arrangements were premiered at the Library of Congress in recognition of its archiving of Wilson's work.

The real interest lies in his suite of original themes. 'Lyons' Roar' is a dedication to Monterey Festival maven Jimmy Lyons; the main soloists are trumpeter Oscar Brashear, tenors Carl Randall and Randall Willis, and guitarist Anthony Wilson, who probably gets more space on the disc than he strictly deserves. It also features pianist Brian O'Rourke, who is the most effective presence of 'Cookin' On Cannery Row' and 'Spanish Bay.' The set is very nearly hijacked by the very first track, an exquisite thing called 'Romance', which highlights the bright, expressive soprano of Scott Mayo.”

As the album title makes obvious, Mr. Wilson was off to New York in 2005 to record New York New Sound [Mack Avenue Records MAC 1009] or as Harvey Siders explains it in his insert notes:

“For this album, the only non-laid back resident of L.A. was in a New York state of mind, and came up with a session that sounds like it was written by a cat half his age. Between the jet-propelled bookends of ‘Milestones’ and ‘Nancy Jo,’ are outstanding examples of Gerald’s thick-textured wide voicings providing plenty of stretch-out room for such stellar soloists as Jimmy Owens, Trumpet, Luis Bonilla, Trombone, Jesse Davis, Alto Sax, Jimmy Heath, Tenor Saxophone, and Kenny Barron, Piano.

Dig some of the highlights. ‘Blues for Count’ was suggested by Basie. Gerald told me: ‘Bill said: “Write it real soft then let it get loud,” ‘so I let it build from a triple pianissimo to a triple fortissimo.’ It makes the explosion at the end – a raucous, free climax – all the more effective. Check out Clark Terry’s “double” Trumpet solo, alternating between muted and open playing. Sounds like he’s beside himself. …

Coltrane’s ‘Equinox’ has a mesmerizing, repeated rhythmic figure that Wilson and especially the soloists use as a launching pad. Benny Powell, the first of four Trombone soloists, manages to “slide” in a quote from “Why Don’t You Do Right.” …

Another participant, pianist Rene Rosnes, summed up the leader’s charisma most eloquently: ‘If I were to watch a silent film of Gerald conducting, I would still be able to experience the swing of the music, his presence is that powerful.”

For In My Time, also issued in 2005 on Mack Avenue Records [MAC 1025], Wilson returned to Manhattan to lead an all-star big band through the ten tunes featured on “In My Time.” The centerpieces of the project are the three selections--“Dorian.” “Ray's Vision at the U,” and “Blues For Manhattan”--that comprise the suite titled “The Diminished Triangle.” “ ‘The Diminished Triangle’ is the study of diminished chords,” explains Wilson. “We have three diminished chords which add up to 12 different notes, and all musicians study the 12 tones. By using the diminished triangle many different ways, one can get a lot of different harmonic sounds. This suite gave me the opportunity to use a lot of eight-part harmony.”

Josef Woodward’s JazzTimes review of the album noted:

Commissioned by The California Institute for the Preservation of Jazz, and supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and marshaled by Cal State Long Beach educator Ray Briggs (for whom “Ray's Vision at the U” was named), “The Diminished Triangle” was debuted at Cal State L.A. on April 2, 2005.

Every selection on “In My Time” is filled with a sense of exhilaration, dense and distinctive harmonies, and stirring solos. “Sax Chase,” which in the 1980s was known as “Triple Chase,” showcases Wilson's talents as an arranger, and features stirring saxophone solos from Ron Blake, Steve Wilson, Kamasi Washington, Gary Smulyan and Dustin Cicero. On “Blues For Manhattan” Wilson explained that he utilized five-part harmony for the sax section, so that each player is performing a harmony of the melodic line without any doubling. One of the highlights on “Lomelin,” written for the great bullfighter Antonio Lomelin, is a dramatic trumpet solo from Jon Faddis. As evidence that Wilson’s music is inherently connected to his life, “AEN” is named after his son, guitarist Anthony Wilson, and for his two grandsons, Eric and Nicholas, while “Musette,” which includes a beautiful guitar solo from Russell Malone, was named after a poodle given to Gerald's three daughters. Also on this memorable project are Wilson's “Jeri” (named after his first-born daughter) and reworkings of Miles Davis' “So What” and Cole Porter’s “Love For Sale.” “I originally wrote an arrangement for 'Love For Sale' in 1953, using Jerry Dodgion on lead alto. 52 years later, I got to use him again on the new version.” Among the other soloists heard from along the way are trumpeters Jimmy Owens, Sean Jones and Jeremy Pelt, trombonist Luis Bonilla and pianist Renee Rosnes.

“The musicians in the band were really into the music and they are brilliant players,” enthused Wilson. “They are at home everywhere they are, in every bar of music.”

The same can be said for the veteran bandleader.”

Interviewed in 2004, Mr. Wilson had this to say which will serve as some closing thoughts to this profile:

"There's a few more things I want to do. The sound of my band is the harmonic structure that I use and I have a theory that I call eight-part harmony theory. They don't have it yet in the universities either. That is the use of eight different notes instead of four. Most bands are playing four-part harmony - a little five-part, a little six every now and then, but basically four parts. Now with my theory, you'll be able to write and use eight different notes. In other words, when you hear my brass shout down on eight different notes, it's going to wipe you out right quick, because there's so much in jazz. We have twelve tones to use in music. If you're just using four and five, what are you going to do with the other seven? There are other notes there. And everything is compatible on the piano. I do that to demonstrate to my classes. I just go and hit every note I can get my elbow and my hands and my arms on and hit them all at once. And then you hear the greatest chord you ever heard in your life. But you can't write that, you know, so you try to get as near as you can. My theory will be out in a new book that's coming out in about a year from now. My theory will be there and they'll have it, if there are young writers that would like to advance in harmony, they'll get a chance to see right there how to do it. It's there.”

Amazingly, Mr. Wilson was there “then” in 1939 when he joined Jimmy Lunceford’s band and he is still here “now” in 2009 once again leading his own orchestra – 70 years of unending, Jazz creativity.

Through his hard work and dedication, Mr. Wilson has evolved into a Jazz composer-arranger sui generis.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/gerald-wilson-gerald-wilson-by-wbgo-883fm.php

Gerald Wilson
by WBGO 88.3FM
May 17, 2004
AllAboutJazz

GERALD WILSON

(1918-2014)

Gary Walker: The winner and recipient of so many awards that if I listed the mall, we’d be here the whole hour. Nominated six times for a Grammy award. An NEA recipient as a jazz master. His works are ensconced in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. He’s asked for them back by the way... No, he hasn’t. Because he ain’t done yet. They’ve got to make more space. The wonderful bandleader, composer, arranger, orchestrator, educator and energizer, Gerald Wilson is with us his morning. Gerald, thank you for coming down.

Gerald Wilson: Well, thank you for having me over to this wonderful jazz station here.

Walker: You were smiling during that tune there. That’s 1940...

Wilson: Nineteen forty-one. It brought back such great memories for me. Actually, it wasn’t the first arrangement that I made for the band when I joined Jimmy Lunceford, but it was actually my second arrangement and orchestration. So I love it when I hear it because I can see all the guys there, all the wonderful musicians in the Lunceford band. It just brought back great memories for me.

Walker: Those two tunes that we’re talking about right here, “High Spook” and that one there, “Yard Dog Mazurka” which Ray Wetzel kind of turned inside out and it became “Intermission Riff” later on for the Kenton band. But those two tunes, “High Spook” and “Yard Dog Mazurka,” you may or may not know this, were the inspiration for a young guy who when he heard those two tunes said “I want to be a jazz musician.’ And his name was Horace Silver.

Wilson: Horace Silver. Yeah. My dear friend. I just talked with him a couple of days ago before I left Los Angeles. He’s a dear friend and, as I say, one of my favorite composers and a wonderful person. So it’s good to be around him. I told him about two or three weeks ago that I’m sorry I didn’t meet you that day that you saw the band because I was there and he was just a little kid. But anyway, I see him now mostly every week or so. It’s just good. Horace Silver is such a great musician.

Walker: If you’re just tuning in this morning, our special guest is Gerald Wilson who has come from the west coast to what we like to call the best coast. And he’ll be leading his big band tonight made up of a bunch of New York cats, but many of those cats go way, way back with you in various places that you stopped along the way. You’ve done so much in your career. One stop was with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra and I think you and Jimmy Heath.

Wilson: Absolutely. I was lucky enough to be able to join the Dizzy Gillespie band in 1950 and Jimmy Heath at that time was the second alto player in that band because the first alto player in the band at that time was John Coltrane. It was a wonderful band. It had Paul Gonsalves. It had John Lewis was back on piano. Al McKibbon, my classmate from Detroit and so many of the great musicians in the Dizzy Gillespie band. Incidentally, I want you to know I actually knew Dizzy Gillespie while I was still in high school in Detroit. Because he came to Detroit in 1938 with Edgar Hayes’ band and stayed there for 12 weeks. We became great friends at that time

Walker: You’re talking about Cass Technical High School where people like Tommy Flanagan, Betty Carter and so many others passed through and you also spent some time there. Was it Cass High School?

Wilson: Cass Tech is the name of the school. I stayed there for five years. It was an amazing school because at that time all of the schools in Detroit were integrated. That was in 1934 when segregation was real big at that time. But it was a wonderful city, a wonderful school, as you know. Bobby Byrn, one of my classmates, his father was the head of the music department. Bobby Byrn is a young kid who at the age of 16, I think it was, he replaced Tommy Dorsey with the Dorsey Brothers orchestra. So he was quite a guy. So you can imagine what kind of school it was. It was music all day. Had it not been for Cass, I doubt seriously whether I’d be here talking to you today.

Walker: Wow, that’s quite a testimonial. Way back with the Lunceford band, 19 years old. But in 1943, I believe it was, took off on your own. Snooky Young came along with you. And everybody said, “You’re doing what?” He says, “This guy Gerald Wilson has got something going on here. And I need to get me some more of this.” And so you went out and you formed your own band, in your early 20s. You toured all over the United States, played some incredible venues. And back then you could do that, because we’re talking about the 1940s when the big band sound was alive and well, wasn’t it?

Wilson: Yes. Well you know Snooky and I were in the Lunceford band together. We played. We had played with a band in Ohio just a couple of weeks or so before I joined Jimmy Lunceford. Well, actually about a month before I joined Jimmy Lunceford. Then when Eddie Tompkins left the Lunceford band, Snooky came to join the Lunceford band. So we both left and went to California. Because we were waiting to be drafted into the service at that time. But it just so happened I didn’t get drafted for about a year, so in between that time I was just very fortunate. I was lucky enough to play with Benny carter’s band. Actually Les Hite’s band also. Snooky and I were with Les Hite’s band, which was a great band on the west coast. Actually Dizzy Gillespie played in Less Hite’s band at one time. So when Benny came to California, we joined Benny’s band. That was a chance to learn so much more from such a great musician like Benny. And then, of course, going into the service. Into the United States Navy. Another chance to go to school again and I was lucky enough to be there with my good friend Willie Smith out of the Lunceford band. Clark Terry the great trumpeter was there. All of the musicians were fine and it was another chance to learn so much about what I was seeking. I was just a great time for me during that period.

Walker: What a great time for me and what an honor for me to be talking to Gerald Wilson, who is one of a select group of the trumpet writers. Benny Carter would be another. Sy Oliver. Neil Hefti. Quincy Jones and yourself. That’s some pretty good company.

Wilson: They’re all my friends. As you say, Benny Carter was a great trumpet player himself. I actually replaced Sy Oliver. When he left to join Tommy Dorsey it gave me the opportunity to join the Lunceford band. Sy is my dear friend. I knew all of the guys in the band at that time. In fact, you know, during that period whenever the band would hit Detroit, a bunch of kids I attended school with we would just hang out with all of the bands from the time they got to town until they leave. So you knew everybody. Duke and Chick Webb. Ella and all of those people. So it was a chance to be with the people that meant so much and helped us so much, the younger musicians during that period.

Walker: Now here we are in the year 2003 and we still got some stuff to talk about here. A brand new recording. In fact you’ll be celebrating this for one night tonight at Birdland in New York City with a bunch of these New York guys that’ll be joining you and you’ll be celebrating New York, New Sound which is a new recording on the Mack Avenue record label, with your good friend Stix Hooper, who’s featured on a lot of these tracks. Stix also did some work for you back when, didn’t he?

Wilson: Yes he did, during a time in the 60s there when the Crusaders were in Los Angeles. I needed a drummer at one period and Stix came in to help me out, stayed with me for a few jobs. I also brought along their bassist Buster Williams. So it was really a great time. And I want to thank Stix for giving me this opportunity to be a part of this venture. I wanted to come and work with some of the wonderful musicians here in New York. You know, I kind of consider New York as one of my homes. I have quite a few homes. In fact, I’d like to name them if I could. I have my first home, which is Shelby, Mississippi. My second home is Memphis, Tennessee. I studied there for three years in high school. And also at a school where Jimmy Lunceford had been a teacher and a football coach.

Then my next stop was Detroit, Michigan. That’s my other home. And New York was my next home. And of course I thought at that time, there was a statement we had going along in the band and around New York: We’d leave New York to go to heaven. So I had planned to make my whole life right in New York. Every chance I get to come here, I’m eager to get here because this is my home. And of course Los Angeles is another one of my homes. And San Francisco is one of my homes because I lived there for about three years. So I’ve got all those wonderful homes in the United States and I’m just so proud to have a chance to be in those wonderful places. And of course the whole country. You know the Lunceford band played every state, every capital city in the United States except one, and that was North Dakota. So all the rest I’ve been to thanks to the Lunceford band and the other bands. I spent two years with Count Basie’s band, so that was another two years here in New York. I feel like it’s my home too. It is my home too, and it will always be.

Walker: We’re going to get into some of this new recording. It’s a revisit, however. And as I look through the glass I see his wonderful wife, Josephina. And I want to play this version of it. Every version is different because of the soloists and the members of the band that bring something to it. You’ll hear Kenny Barron on piano here and his old buddy Jimmy Heath on the tenor saxophone from the new recording, New York, New Sound: Today. Gerald Wilson our guest on Jazz 88.

[plays recording]

Walker: It is hard keeping up with Gerald Wilson, ladies and gentlemen. I gotta tell ya. Right there, a couple of family affairs for him. Recreations on his new recording entitled New York, New Sound on the Mack Avenue record label. He’ll be celebrating that tonight, for one evening only at Birdland in New York City. A piece right there called “Nancy Joe” for one of his daughters it’s named. With Sean Jones on the trumpet and Jesse Davis just burning up on the alto saxophone. Son Anthony Wilson on the guitar and Kenny Barron, reminiscent of Jack Wilson on the piano. And “Josephina” with Kenny Barron taking a solo again and Gerald’s good buddy Jimmy Heath on the tenor. You’ve got to know, as we were listening to this music, Gerald was sitting here going, “Wow. Listen to that Sean Jones. Listen to him.” He’s like me. He’s like me when I listen to this music, except he really knows it inside and out.

And man, I’m telling you he can hang. I remember back in Toronto at the International Association of Jazz Educators one night — I think the restaurant had closed, you know that palm area they had there in the lobby — They came and they asked us to leave. I said “what about those people I hear on the other side of the palm trees there?” And he said “we’re going to ask them to leave too.” And I mean it was late, folks. There was nobody else in the place. And as we got up ready to leave, I peeked through the palm and down at the end of the table was Gerald Wilson and some of his buddies sitting around, telling stories and laughing and having a good time. I just couldn’t hang any more. It was late. I mean, it was he late, late show was over and they were still hanging. This music makes you feel like that doesn’t it?

Wilson: Well, it makes me feel that way. I’m glad the musicians that play it, they play it so well and they give their own sound to it. It’s a different sound. It’s the sound of the people that makes the music. It’s like the Duke Ellington band. Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges, Cat Anderson, Clark Terry and all those great musicians. They make the sound of the band. And that’s what the Duke said, so that’s good enough for me.

Walker: You did, I wouldn’t necessarily call it ghost arranging, but you did some work. You worked on “Anatomy of a Murder,” correct?

Wilson: I worked for Duke quite a while. I made my first two arrangements for him in 1947. They were for Columbia Records. Everything that I did for the Duke has been recorded and that includes 15 numbers I did for him in all during my career. As you said, it was like ghosting, but later on I got all of my credit for everything I did for the Duke and I’m so happy that he gave me the chance to be a part of his organization.

Walker: We played Nancy Wilson this morning and some of your work with her. I played a couple of things with you and the great Ray Charles. Dinah Washington, you went out on the road together.

Wilson: Billie Holliday.

Walker: Billie Holliday. And Bobby Darrin. You did some work with Bobby Darrin. I think it was Dinah Washington you went out on the road with and then when you were done with that tour, wasn’t that the tour when you disbanded because you said, “I don’t have enough time to learn. I need to learn more.”

Wilson: That was Ella Fitzgerald. Ella Fitzgerald and my orchestra and I had just hired a young singer in Chicago, where I had just been for 10 weeks at the El Grotto, named Joe Williams. And I realized that my band had reached the top already. We were right there. We had been to New York, we had already played the Apollo and they gave us a great welcome here in New York in 1946. So I said “I haven’t even started. I’ve got to get back and study so I can really earn what they’re giving me now.” So that’s what happened there.

Walker: This is a man that says I want to write for orchestra, I want to write for television, I want to write for film and I just don’t have the time to do all that stuff. So disbanded and had a million dates booked, so I’ll bet your booking agent never talked to you after that point. Couldn’t understand why at the top of the game someone would say “I need to disband.” And the answer was simply: a man who was dedicated to his art said “I gotta stop this in order to do this over here.” I heard you mention recently in an interview with someone about what I call a full service musician. Someone like yourself who not only plays, but also composes and arranges for the world of jazz, but also does it for the world of television and the world of film. You had mentioned someone like Terrance Blanchard coming along these days as someone who carries that kind of torch. You had that kind of torch too. We talked about “Anatomy of a Murder.” I wonder if anyone remembers the Connie Francis film “Where the Boys Are.”

Wilson: “Where the Boys Are.”

Walker: That was also something that you did in the world of film.

Wilson: Yes. That was for MGM. It was my first picture to work on. It was a great honor. I did others after that, of course. I worked with David Racksin over at Columbia. I did stuff at Universal and Warner Brothers. And then my other was, I wanted to write for the symphony orchestra, you know, so I had studied and studied hard and one day I got an invitation from Zubin Mehta to compose a number for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and after that, got a commission to do four other orchestrations for them which he took all over the world with him. He brought his to New York and played it with the New York Philharmonic, some of my work. He also did it with the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv. So once I got there I was ready for anything, so that’s what I had been working for.

Walker: It’s interesting that you talk about MQM being the first place that you did work for film. That was also the first place where Lalo Schfrin did film work and I think it’s because they were a recording arm, they were also a film arm too. Lalo told me, he said “I just want to do some of that.” It’s a little bit harder these days, but scoring for film, “Anatomy of a Murder.” Television shows, you were musical director for Redd Foxx.

Wilson: Yes. You know I would like to also put in a plug for another New Yorker, a fellow by the name of Calvin Jackson. I know people won’t remember him because he never got any credit also on the screen. But he did over 14 films at MGM. I mean complete. He was a fantastic writer, had done some work for the Lunceford band when I was with them in 1939 and 1940. I just wanted to give him that plug because a lot of credit he didn’t get during his time here.

Walker: He’s a member of so many hierarchies in the world of music and for the past 40 minutes or so I hope you’re getting an understanding about the wonderful world of Gerald Wilson, whether a member of the Jimmy Lunceford band early on or scoring “Anatomy of a Murder” and working not only with Duke Ellington, but working with Count Basie and so many others and working with so many singers over the years and his work in film and television as well. But also a member of Los Aficionados des Los Angeles. Talk about that if you would.

Wilson: That is an exclusive bullfighting club. And they have units all over the United States. It’s a very large organization. Each year they give you an award if you have contributed something to the world of tauromaquia, the world of the bullfight. It just so happens I have written a number of compositions for bullfighters, my first one being, of course, Jose Ramone Tirado who is one of the greatest of his time, a young man that thrilled me the first time I saw him because he was such an artist. I said I’ve got to write something to try to paint this young man in music. So I tried that and it kind of came off from him and became a big hit for me.

Walker: You make the distinction, and you’ve recorded that song four or five times, but you’ve also said there are 18 or 19 other versions.

Wilson: Absolutely. There are about 17 or 18 different versions of it, including some people that you wouldn’t expect it from. Like the guy that did the “Yackety Sax,” he did it. Percy Faith did a fine version of it. And many others. Jack Costanza. I can’t name them all. It was a big hit. It has been into some TV things too, by the way.

Walker: Gerald is someone who treats the world of bullfighting as an art, not a sport, because of the similarities between the artistry of the matador and the artistry of the jazz musician. And we will continue with our conversation with Gerald Wilson after we enjoy some of Gerald’s work.

Walker: Yet another and ever so fresh. Sounds like the first time you’ve ever heard it. “Viva Tirado” which is a tribute to Jose Ramone Tirado, one of the world’s greatest bullfighters. And the art of bullfighting, not the sport of bullfighting. And Gerald Wilson a member of Los Aficionados des Los Angeles, which is a very exclusive... Have you ever been in the ring?

Wilson: The bull ring?

Walker: Yeah.

Wilson: Yes, I’ve been in there numerous times. I knew all of the matadors by that time. I’d written for about eight or nine of them, had written numbers for them. So when I’d come in, they’d all treat me like I’m a part of the group, you know. It was wonderful. My wife exposed me to her culture, the Mexican culture. Because a lot of times, some of the numbers I write, you wouldn’t think that a black guy had written this. But that’s because of environment. She had exposed me to the environment and I could hear it. I heard the music. They have such great music there in Mexico also. We were just in Mexico last year and it’s a wonderful thing to be liked by other people too.

Walker: There’s a lot of people here in this area that also like you very much too.

Wilson: Well, I’m sure happy about that.

Walker: A couple of guys, the American Jazz Orchestra guys, are probably a lot of them are listening this morning. Mr. Giddins and the hard work that he did over there. And of course the late John Lewis as the musical direction. But what a concert that was.

Wilson: I want to thank Gary Giddins and John Lewis and the American Jazz Orchestra and Schoenberg. They’re such wonderful people and they brought me in. It was a real shot in the arm for me to be able to come back to New York and work with all the wonderful musicians. Jerry Dodgion was in that band. He had worked with my band in San Francisco. Jerome Richardson and Benny Powell. I can name them all. They were all just wonderful musicians that I love working with. That gave me a chance to be back in New York again with them.

Walker: With everything that you have done. It’s such a pity we only have an hour here, because Gerald and I could sit and talk for four and a half hours about various things. Such as your approach to the Afro-Cuban area of music is not so much what you do with it rhythmically, but what you do with it harmonically. And parts for the various sections, right?

Wilson: Yes, because I don’t know too much about... They have so many different kinds of rhythms and when they come in with their percussion section, they’ve got so much going on, to try and write all of that would be a mistake, I believe. But all you do is put that stuff around the harmonic tones and things like that and they’ll take care of the rhythm. So, I love the Cuban music and the Afro-Cuban approach, but as I say, trying to write out the rhythm parts — just forget it and let them take care of it because they know what to do.

Walker: Now you still write by hand. You don’t use a computer. You hate a computer as much as I do, don’t you?

Wilson: I can’t even turn it on. I have one at home that my daughter gave me a year ago. I haven’t even learned how to turn it on. But I’m going to, because as you know I’m having a little problem with my eyes right now. I just can’t see the small print and things like that. So I’m just going to have to get so that I just have my keyboard there. When I do it on the piano — boom — it’s right there. And if you want to hear it back, you can hear it back right now. I’m looking forward to working with the computer.

Walker: With everything that you have done and the cultural contributions that you have made, the educational contributions. You should have seen this guy at the IAJE in Toronto. He was working and pushing, as he does, pushing the University of Michigan Jazz Ensemble. And when they got done. And when they got done — I can’t remember the tune, but it was: Bah bah! It just ended right on a dime. And they all looked at each other like “Who the hell just did..? Why it was us!” And that happens every time you take the stand. And I’m sure it’s going to happen tonight with seasoned musicians. Who are some of the cats going to be with you tonight?

Wilson: Tonight we’re going to have Rene Rosnes with the Carnegie Hall group will be there. We’re going to have, I don’t know if you know Charles Fambrough a great bassist, played with Art Blakey. A wonderful bassist. He’ll be there with us. Lewis Nash will be there with us. Anthony Wilson, my son, will be with us. We’re going to have Jay Branford, baritone. We’re going to have Jerry Dodgion, we’re going to have Jesse Davis. We’re going to have Frank Wess, the great Frank Wess. And I brought a young man from the school where I work. You know I teach at UCLA now, I’m in my 13th year there now. I brought a young 22-year-old saxophonist that is just going to electrify the crowd. He is just marvelous. Be looking for this guy and listening to him tonight. You’re going to enjoy him. All the other guys. We’ve got Jon Faddis, of course. I want to thank Jon. He contracts the band here. We’ve got Jimmy Owens who made my first “Carlos” back about 38 years ago. He’ll be back to play “Carlos” again a he did on my first album. Also Sean Jones will be there. He’s a monster on the trumpet. Frank Green. So we have really an outstanding bunch of guys. Benny Powell. Who are the other guys we’ve got? I’m trying to think of all of them. But anyway, they will all be there, the ones that are on this record. I’m looking forward to Birdland tonight. You know, I never got a chance to play in Birdland. I had been in Birdland a number of times. I was there every year I’d come to New York. I’d be over there. But this time, I can now say that I have played in Birdland. We know that that’s the great place that honors the great Charlie Parker and I want to thank the people for giving me the chance to be in a wonderful establishment tonight.

Walker: When I hear your music, whether it’s the inspiration from the Monterey Jazz Festival, the five-part wonderful suite you wrote “Theme for Monterey” to help celebrate one of their anniversaries, but when I hear your music, I see dance. Did you work with dance companies?

Wilson: Everything I do, if you are there to watch me, I choreograph it because I do the dancing up on the stage, although I’m not a dancer. I can’t even dance. But when the music comes, I choreograph it. That’s just one of those things. I want to feel it, you know.

Walker: This man is 85 years old.

Wilson: Wow!

Walker: He just celebrated his 85th birthday. Listen to him. After 50, they’re all a surprise, right? Just last month in September, celebrated his 85th birthday. And I’m telling you, when he talks about choreographing the performance. Some of you have seen, you couldn’t have missed over the last few years, you couldn’t have missed Michael Jackson performing and the way he moves on stage. He ain’t got nothin’ on Gerald Wilson the way he moves on stage. I’m serious about this. I don’t have a clue as to how you do it. I hope I’m still walking down the street.

Wilson: One time when I was a kid I was working with a band in Detroit and the pianist was 50 years old and I was 17 at that time. I said, “Gee, 50 is old. If I make it to 50, I hope I can make it that long.” So I’ve been lucky to be out here a little longer than that.

Walker: What would you like to do that you haven’t done?

Wilson: There’s a few more things I want to do. The sound of my band is the harmonic structure that I use and I have a theory that I call eight-part harmony theory. They don’t have it yet in the universities either. That is the use of eight different notes instead of four. Most bands are playing four-part harmony. A little five-part. A little six every now and then. But basically four parts. Now with my theory, you’ll be able to write and use eight different notes. In other words, when you hear my brass shout down on eight different notes, it’s going to wipe you out right quick, because there’s so much in jazz. We have 12 tones to use in music. If you’re just using four and five, what are you going to do with the other seven? There are other notes there. And everything is compatible on the piano. I do that to demonstrate to my classes. I just go and hit every note I can get my elbow and my hands and my arms on and hit them all at once. And then you hear the greatest chord you ever heard in your life. But you can’t write that, you know, so you try to get as near as you can.

My theory will be out in a new book that’s coming out in about a year from now. My theory will be there and they’ll have it, if there are young writers that would like to advance in harmony, they’ll get a chance to see right there how to do it. It’s there.

Walker: That theory will be practiced. And I tell you, if you’re a composer or arranger and you walk into Gerald’s room, you’re in big trouble, man. You’re in big trouble I can tell. Gerald, thank you.

Wilson: I want to thank you and thank this wonderful jazz station here, music station, in Newark. I’ve been here, this will be my third time, I believe. I enjoy coming here every time I get here. I want to thank you for inviting me to be here today.

THE MUSIC OF GERALD WILSON: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. WILSON:

Gerald Wilson Orchestra - "Viva Tirado" (1967):

Gerald Wilson - Conductor
Hadley Caliman - Tenor Saxophone
Charles Tolliver - Trumpet
Don Switzer, Lester Robertson, Mike Barone, Thurman Green - Trombone
Phil Moore III - Piano
William "Buddy" Woodson - Bass
Carl Lott - Drums

Recorded live April 1,1967 at Marty's-On-The-Hill in Los Angeles.

Gerald Wilson Orchestra blues for "Yna Yna"--1961:

Gerald Wilson Orchestra - "Romance"

Bandleader/arranger Gerald Wilson, a longtime fixture at California's Monterey Jazz Festival, was commissioned in 1997 to write an original piece for the festival, and he created 'Theme For Monterey,' a deliciously sophisticated five-movement modern big band suite showcasing a memorable 40-bar (AABBA) theme in a number of different settings. The 1999 studio recording received a Grammy nomination for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Performance, and this, the gorgeous opening movement, a nod for Best Instrumental Composition. That's Scott Mayo on soprano sax.

Gerald Stanley Wilson (born September 4, 1918) is an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer/arranger, and educator. He has been based in Los Angeles since the early 1940s. In addition to being a band leader, Mr. Wilson has written arrangements for many other prominent artists, like Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Nancy Wilson and many more.

In 1997, bandleader/arranger Gerald Wilson was commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival to write an original piece to be performed at that year's festival. Wilson's goal was to compose a melody that the audience would leave the venue singing to themselves. He succeeded by casting his "Theme for Monterey" in five different styles, with his big band interpreting the theme in a variety of moods -- as a ballad, a Latin romp, a medium-tempo piece and a shouting conclusion. "Lyons' Roar" (my Favorite), is one of the five from his album. This is Truly a Beautiful Jazz Song! - ENJOY!

His memorable five-part suite has solos by his son, guitarist Anthony Wilson, trumpeter Oscar Brashear, pianist Brian O'Rourke, trombonist George Bohanon, trumpeter Carl Saunders, Randall Willis on tenor, and others.

Gerald Wilson 'You Better Believe It!' (Full Album):

Fontana - 688 101 ZL (Holland's Mono Pressing):

A1. Blues For Yna Yna 00:00 A2. Jeri 06:53 A3. Moody Blue 10:38 A4. Straight Up And Down 13:47 B1.

LP: YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT Pacific Jazz Records .

Fontana - 688 144 ZL (Mono):

A1. So What 00:00 A2. Caprichos 05:53 A3. Paco 12:45 B1. Ravi 19:03 B2. Aram 24:57 B3. 'Round Midnight 28:42 B4. Eric 33:52 .

Gerald Wilson Orchestra - Jeri 1961/Pacific Jazz Records Big Band Jazz from the album:You Better Believe It featuring the Jazz Organ of Richard Groove.

The Gerald Wilson Orchestra 'in the studio' recording 'Before Motown' from the new CD DETROIT:

The incredible Gerald Wilson leads his fantastic orchestra in the recording of 'Before Motown' - a track from the Gerald Wilson Orchestra's CD 'Detroit.'

Detroit is Mr. Gerald Wilson's fourth release on Mack Avenue Records, and the follow-up to his critically acclaimed Monterey Moods. Commissioned by the Detroit International Jazz Festival to celebrate its 30th anniversary, Detroit is a six-part suite that evokes both the edge and the ambition of this blue collar city. Detroit premiered at the Festival on Geralds 91st birthday at which time he was honored with The Spirit Of Detroit Award in recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions to the city.

Featuring: trumpeters Jon Faddis, Bobby Rodriguez and Jimmy Owens; trombonists Dennis Wilson, Luis Bonilla and Doug Purviance; saxophonists Steve Wilson, Kamasi Washington, Antonio Hart, Jackie Kelso and Ronnie Cuber; pianists Brian ORourke and Renee Rosnes; bassists Trey Henry, Peter Washington and Todd Coolman; drummers Mel Lee and Lewis Nash. Guest soloists include flute master Hubert Laws, trumpeter Sean Jones and guitarist Anthony Wilson.

Gerald Wilson - Moment of Truth (1962)

johnnystaccata
1/9 videos

"Viva Tirado" - Gerald Wilson:

Side A recorded August 27, GERALD WILSON (arr, cond); CARMELL JONES, JULES CHAIKIN, JOHN AUDINO,
FRED HILL (tp); BOB EDMONDSON, LOU BLACKBURN, FRANK STRONG, BOB KNIGHT (tb); TEDDY
EDWARDS, HAROLD LAND (ts); JOE MAINI (as); DON RAFFELL (reeds); BUD SHANK (fl); JACK WILSON (p); JOE
PASS (g); JIMMY BOND (b); MEL LEWIS (dr)

Side B recorded September, same personnel as above except AL PORCINO is added to trumpet section, KENNY
SHROYER & LES ROBERTSON replace FRANK STRONG & BOB KNIGHT, JACK NIMITZ replaces DON RAFFELL;
MODESTO DURAN (cga) is added on #A1 & B2

Recorded: August/September 1962 at Pacific Jazz Studio in Hollywood

Gerald Wilson Orchestra - "Aram":

Gerald Wilson Orchestra: Detroit (2009)

Composer Aram Khachaturian, one of Wilson’s prime inspirations, wrote the upwardly mobile minor vamp which informed John Barry’s Goldfinger theme and countless pieces all over the world. Here it receives a Wilsonian reconstitution on the sprightly “Aram.” The Armenian master also supplied the opening to Wilson’s enduring “Blues For Yna Yna,” the first jazz waltz since Fats Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz.” Like “Yna Yna,” “Aram” swings in three.

"Detroit" by Gerald Wilson

Gerald Wilson Orchestra

Gerald Wilson Orchestra -- "In The Limelight":

Track listing:

All compositions by Gerald Wilson except as indicated

"Los Moros de Espana" - 3:05
"Who Can I Turn To?" (Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley) - 2:50
"Ricardo" - 4:30
"Musette" - 2:34
"In the Limelight" - 5:47
"Lighthouse Blues" - 7:25
"El Viti" - 3:50
"Lately" (Lester Robinson) - 3:42
"Perdido" (Juan Tizol) - 4:26

Recorded at Capitol Studios on January 13, 1965 (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9) and Pacific Jazz Studios on March 10, 1965 (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8) in Los Angeles, CA

From the album "On Stage"

Personnel:

Gerald Wilson - arranger, conductor, trumpet
Bobby Bryant (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8), Jules Chaikin, Freddie Hill, Nat Meeks, Melvin Moore, Al Porcino (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9) - trumpet
Bob Edmondson, John Ewing, Lester Robertson - trombone
Don Switzer (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9), Ernie Tack (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8) - bass trombone
Bud Shank - alto saxophone, flute (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9)
Anthony Ortega - alto saxophone
Curtis Amy (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9), Teddy Edwards, Harold Land - tenor saxophone
Jack Nimitz - baritone saxophone
Roy Ayers - vibraphone
Phil Moore III - piano
Jack Wilson - piano, organ (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8)
Joe Pass - guitar
Victor Gaskin (tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 & 8), Herbie Lewis (tracks 1, 4, 6 & 9) - bass
Chuck Carter - drums

Gerald Wilson -- "Blues Latinese"

From the album 'The Golden Sword'--1966:

Gerald Wilson - "Paco":

Gerald Wilson Orchestra - Legacy - EPK:

Amazon http://amzn.to/mN1tW3 | iTunes http://bit.ly/kHu1Z1

Gerald Wilson, jazz's reigning composer/orchestrator pays homage to his adopted hometown, Chicago on his fifth Mack Avenue Records release, Legacy. Composers Igor Stravinsky and Giacomo Puccini also receive Wilson's musical tips of the hat. Wilson's son, guitarist/composer Anthony Wilson, and grandson Eric Otis are also represented by a composition/orchestration apiece, thus extending Gerald's musical legacy.

Gerald Wilson and the making of 'Monterey Moods':

Gerald Wilson is many things: composer, arranger, bandleader, storyteller, icon, legend. In fact the only constant about Gerald Wilson in his 60 plus year career -- which spans over 50 releases -- has been his drive and determination to remain innovative. Monterey Moods is his third release for Mack Avenue following the Grammy® nominated New York, New Sound and his critically acclaimed In My Time. In addition, this is the third time Mr. Wilson has been honored with a commission from the Monterey Jazz Festival. Monterey Moods commemorates the Golden Anniversary of one of the preeminent Jazz festivals in our history -- it is also a musical work of art from one of the great Jazz composers of our time. Featuring a guest appearance by Hubert Laws.

http://www.mackavenue.com/geraldwilson

AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH GERALD WILSON
on Jazz program "Piano Jazz"
hosted by Marion McPartland

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (NPR)
JUNE 19, 2006:

http://pastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/NPR-Piano-Jazz-With-Gerald-Wilson-June-19-2006.mp3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Wilson

Gerald Wilson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gerald Wilson
Wilson in 2005
Background information
Birth name	Gerald Stanley Wilson
Born	September 4, 1918 Shelby, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	September 8, 2014 (aged 96) Los Angeles
Genres	Jazz, pop
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer, bandleader
Instruments	Trumpet
Years active	1938–2014
Labels	Capitol, Pacific Jazz, Discovery
Associated acts	Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Jimmy Lunceford

Gerald Stanley Wilson (September 4, 1918 – September 8, 2014)^[1] was an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer/arranger, and educator. Born in Mississippi, he was based in Los Angeles from the early 1940s.^[2] In addition to being a band leader, Wilson wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Julie London, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Nancy Wilson.^[1]

Early life

Wilson was born in Shelby, Mississippi,^[1] and at the age of 16 moved to Detroit, where he graduated from Cass Technical High School (one of his classmates was saxophonist Wardell Gray).^[3] He joined the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra in 1939, replacing its trumpeter and arranger, Sy Oliver. While with Lunceford, Wilson contributed numbers to the band's book, including "Hi Spook" and "Yard-dog Mazurka", the first influenced by Ellington's recording of "Caravan" and the latter an influence on Stan Kenton's "Intermission Riff".^[4]
During World War II, Wilson also performed for a brief time with the U.S. Navy, with musicians including Clark Terry, Willie Smith and Jimmy Nottingham, among others. Around 2005, many of the members of the band reunited as "The Great Lakes Experience Big Band," with Wilson conducting and Ernie Andrews making a guest appearance at the invitation of Clark Terry. Wilson also played and arranged for the bands of Benny Carter, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie.

Career

Advertisement for Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra, 1945

Wilson formed his own band, with some success in the mid-1940s. In 1960, he formed a Los Angeles-based band that began a series of critically acclaimed recordings for the Pacific Jazz label. His 1968 album California Soul featured a title track written by Ashford & Simpson, as well as a version of The Doors' hit "Light My Fire".^[4] Musicians in the band at various times included lead trumpeter Snooky Young, trumpet soloist Carmell Jones and saxophonists Bud Shank, Joe Maini, Harold Land, Teddy Edwards, and Don Raffell. The rhythm section included guitarist Joe Pass, Richard Holmes (organist), vibists Roy Ayers and Bobby Hutcherson, and drummers Mel Lewis and Mel Lee.

Wilson's wife of more than 50 years, Josefina Villasenor Wilson, is Mexican-American, and a number of his compositions showed his love of Spanish/Mexican themes, especially "Viva Tirado", which later became a hit for the rock band El Chicano. Along with his wife, Wilson had three daughters (Jeri, Lillian (Teri) and Nancy Jo), his son Anthony (who is guitarist for Diana Krall), and a number of grandchildren, all of whom have songs composed for them - his compositions were often inspired by his family members.^[1]

Wilson continued leading bands and recording in later decades for the Discovery and MAMA labels. Recent musicians included Luis Bonilla, Rick Baptist, Randall Willis, Wilson's son-in-law Shuggie Otis and son Anthony Wilson (both guitarists); his grandson Eric Otis also played on such recordings. Wilson continued to record Spanish-flavored compositions, notably the bravura trumpet solos "Carlos" (named for Mexican matador Carlos Arruza, and recorded three times over the years, featuring trumpeters Jimmy Owens, Oscar Brashear, and Ron Barrows) and "Lomelin" (also named for a matador—Antonio Lomelin—and recorded twice, with solos by Oscar Brashear and Jon Faddis).

Gerald Wilson at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay, California, January 24, 1988, photo: Brian McMillen

The National Endowment for the Arts named Wilson an NEA Jazz Master in 1990. In 1998 Wilson received a commission from the Monterey Jazz Festival for an original composition, resulting in "Theme for Monterey", which was performed at that year's festival. In later years, he formed orchestras on the West and East coasts, each with local outstanding musicians. He also made special appearances as guest conductor, including with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band (now the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York), the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble and European radio jazz orchestras, conducting the BBC Big Band in 2005.^[3] He hosted an innovative show, in the 1970s, on KBCA in Los Angeles, which was co-hosted by Dennis Smith, where he played " . . . music of the past, the present, and the future."
Wilson was a member of the faculty at California State University, Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles, for many years recently winning a "teacher of the year" award. In the 1970s he also served on the faculty at California State University, Northridge, where he taught Jazz History to wide acclaim among the student body,^[3] and has also taught at Cal Arts in Los Angeles.
In February 2006, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra performed his music with Gerald Wilson conducting. He had a unique style of conducting: "Garbed in well tailored suits, his long white hair flowing, Wilson shaped the music with dynamic movements and the elegant grace of a modern dancer." Asked about his style of conducting by Terry Gross on the NPR show Fresh Air in 2006, he replied, 'It's different from any style you've ever seen before. I move. I choreograph the music as I conduct. You see, I point it out, everything you're to listen to.'"^[1]
In June 2007, Wilson returned to the studio with producer Al Pryor and an all-star big band to record a special album of compositions commissioned and premiered at the Monterey Jazz Festival for the festival's 50th anniversary. Wilson had helped lead celebrations of the festival's 20th and 40th anniversary with his specially commissioned works (1998's Grammy-nominated album Theme for Monterey). The album Monterey Moods was released on Mack Avenue Records in September 2007. In September 2009, Wilson conducted his eight-movement suite "Detroit", commissioned by the Detroit Jazz Festival to mark its 30th anniversary. The work includes a movement entitled "Cass Tech" in honor of his high school alma mater. In 2011, his last recording was the Grammy nominated "Legacy"

Death

Wilson died at his home in Los Angeles, California, on September 8, 2014,^[2] after a brief illness that followed a bout of pneumonia, which had hospitalized him. He was 96 years old.

Discography

As leader

Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1945–1946 (Classics #976) CD note: recordings made for the Excelsior, and Black & White labels.
Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra 1946–1954 (Classics #1444) CDnote: recordings made for the Black & White, U-A-R, Excelsior, and Federal labels.
Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra On Jubilee 1946–1947 (Sounds of Yesteryear #966)
Big Band Modern (The Jazz Factory #22880) CD note: live material recorded 1950 and 1954
You Better Believe It! (Pacific Jazz, 1961)
Moment of Truth (Pacific Jazz, 1962)
Portraits (Pacific Jazz, 1964)
On Stage (Pacific Jazz, 1965)
McCann/Wilson - Les McCann and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra (Pacific Jazz, 1965)
Feelin' Kinda Blues (Pacific Jazz, 1966)
The Golden Sword: Torero Impressions in Jazz (Pacific Jazz, 1966)
Live and Swinging: The Gerald Wilson Orchestra Plays Standards and Blues (Pacific Jazz, 1967)
Everywhere (Pacific Jazz, 1968)
California Soul (Pacific Jazz, 1968)
Eternal Equinox (Pacific Jazz, 1969)
Lomelin (Discovery, 1981)
Jessica (Trend, 1982)
Calafia (Trend, 1984)
Jenna (Discovery, 1989)
State Street Sweet (MAMA Foundation/Summit, 1994)
Suite Memories: Reflections on a Jazz Journey...A Spoken-Word Double Album & Scrapbook (MAMA/Summi, 1996)
Theme for Monterey (MAMA/Summit, 1997)
New York, New Sound (Mack Avenue, 2003)
In My Time (Mack Avenue, 2005)
Monterey Moods (Mack Avenue, 2007)
Detroit (Mack Avenue, 2009)
Legacy (Mack Avenue, 2011)

Compilations

The Best of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra (Pacific Jazz, 1970; reissue: United Artists, 1978)
Love You Madly (Discovery, 1988)
The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson and His Orchestra (Mosaic, 2000) - note: includes all the material (10 albums) that Wilson big band recorded during the 1960
Gerald Wilson...The Artist Selects (Blue Note/EMI, 2005)
You Better Believe It!/Moment of Truth (American Jazz Classics, 2013)

As arranger/sideman

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2015)

With David Axelrod

Songs of Experience (Capitol, 1969) - arranger

With Kenny Burrell

75th Birthday Bash Live! (Blue Note, 2006) - arranger and conductor

With Ray Charles

Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (ABC-Parmamount, 1962) - arranger
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Volume Two (ABC-Parmamount, 1962) - arranger
Have a Smile with Me (ABC, 1964) - arranger

With Buddy Collette

Man of Many Parts (Contemporary, 1956) - trumpet

With Curtis Counce

Carl's Blues (Contemporary, 1958 [rel. 1960]) - trumpet
Sonority (Contemporary, 1958 [rel. 1989]) - trumpet

With Bobby Darin

You're the Reason I'm Living (Capitol, 1963) - arranger

With Duke Ellington

Dance to the Duke! (Capitol, 1954) - trumpet
Anatomy of a Murder (Columbia, 1959) - trumpet
Swinging Suites by Edward E. and Edward G. (Columbia, 1960) - trumpet

With Ella Fitzgerald

Things Ain't What They Used to Be (And You Better Believe It) (Reprise, 1970) - arranger

With Johnny Hartman

Unforgettable Songs (ABC-Paramount, 1966) - arranger and conductor

With Al Hirt

Live at Carnegie Hall (RCA Victor, 1965) - arranger

With Richard "Groove" Holmes

Workin' on a Groovy Thing (World Pacific, 1969) - arranger and conductor

With Carmell Jones

Brass Bag (with Laurence "Tricky" Lofton) (Pacific Jazz, 1962) - arranger and conductor
Business Meetin' (Pacific Jazz, 1962) - arranger and conductor

With Julie London

Feeling Good (Liberty, 1965) - arranger and conductor

With Les McCann

Les McCann Sings (Pacific Jazz, 1961) - arranger and conductor

With Jean-Luc Ponty

Electric Connection (World Pacific, 1969) - arranger and conductor

With Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Sings Soulfully (Roulette, 1963) - arranger

With Leroy Vinnegar

Leroy Walks! (Contemporary, 1958) - trumpet

With Nancy Wilson

Broadway – My Way (Capitol, 1964) - arranger and conductor
Yesterday's Love Songs/Today's Blues (Capitol, 1963) - arranger and conductor

With Jimmy Witherspoon

Singin' The Blues (World Pacific, 1959) - trumpet

References

Don Heckman, "Gerald Wilson dies at 96; multifaceted jazz musician", Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2014.
Richard S. Ginell (2011). "Gerald Wilson Biography". allmusic. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
Peter Vacher, "Gerald Wilson obituary", The Guardian, 15 September 2014.

William Yardley, "Gerald Wilson, Versatile Jazz Arranger, Is Dead at 96", The New York Times, September 9, 2014.

Jürgen Wölfer, Gerald Wilson Discography, Almere (NL) 2012

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gerald Wilson.

Interview of Gerald S. Wilson, part of Central Avenue Sounds Oral History Project^{[permanent dead link]}, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
Mack Avenue Artist Page
The Legacy of Gerald Wilson - Panel Discussion on Detroit JazzStage - Jazz Extras
"Twelve Essential Gerald Wilson Recordings" by Jeff Sultanof
"Track Listing, Personnel & Recording Dates for The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Gerald Wilson" at Mosaic Records
Interview by Jason Crane (Part 1) from The Jazz Session Podcast Series
Interview by Jason Crane (Part 2) from The Jazz Session Podcast Series
Don Heckman, "Gerald Wilson dies at 96; multifaceted jazz musician", Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2014.
Interview with Gerald Wilson NAMM Oral History Library (2004)